dwayne [dwayne@pobox.com] wrote:
>Not that I am overly squeamish about killing people, I just think that
>as a mark of self-respect you should minimise the harm you cause
>wherever possible.
With the possible exception of Joe, I think everyone in this discussion would agree with that. It's the people who disagree (i.e. violent criminals) who we're worried about.
>I'd rather a population heavily armed with tazers, say, than machine
>pistols.
Even if that resulted in higher crime rates because crooks who wouldn't shoot their victims with machine pistols before robbing/raping/whatever would happily stun them with tazers? Even if people who would have walked away from a fight if armed with machine pistols start having tazer shootouts in the street? Even if people start tazering others and then bashing their brains out? Even if crooks who would have surrendered peacefully if their only other choice was to machinegun a cop will happily have a tazer shootout, knowing that it won't kill them?
Non-lethal weapons create many, many new problems of their own.
Mark