Friday, March 04, 2005
Sweeping stun guns to target crowds
New Scientist Breaking News - Sweeping stun guns to target crowds
Weapons that can incapacitate crowds of people by sweeping a lightning-like beam of electricity across them are being readied for sale to military and police forces in the US and Europe.
This is the sort of 'technical breakthrough' that has many people wondering how it will be used and for what reasons. Crowd control issues are of prime importance to police and law enforcement agencies, and especially in light of the worrying aspects relating to acute shortages of water and food and the resultant breakdown of law and order where large populations are located, i.e., cities and suburban areas. But as this article mentions, human rights groups are appalled by the fact that no independent safety tests have been carried out, and by their potential for indiscriminate use.
The weapons are designed to address the perceived shortcomings of the Taser, the electric-shock gun already used by 4000 police departments in the US and undergoing trials with some police forces in the UK.
It hits the victim with two darts that trail current-carrying wires, which limit its range to a maximum of seven metres. As a single shot, short-range weapon, the Taser is of little use in crowd control. And Tasers have no effect on vehicles.
Meanwhile, Xtreme Alternative Defense Systems (XADS), based in Anderson, Indiana, will be one of the first companies to market another type of wireless weapon capable of firing a stream of electricity like water out of a hose at one or many targets in a single sweep," claims XADS president Peter Bitar.
The gun has been designed for the US Marine Corps to use for crowd control and security purposes and is due out in 2005. It is based on early, unwieldy technology and has a range of only three metres, but an operator can debilitate multiple targets by sweeping it across them for "as long as there is an input power source," says Bitar.
Read On (not for the faint hearted)
Weapons that can incapacitate crowds of people by sweeping a lightning-like beam of electricity across them are being readied for sale to military and police forces in the US and Europe.
This is the sort of 'technical breakthrough' that has many people wondering how it will be used and for what reasons. Crowd control issues are of prime importance to police and law enforcement agencies, and especially in light of the worrying aspects relating to acute shortages of water and food and the resultant breakdown of law and order where large populations are located, i.e., cities and suburban areas. But as this article mentions, human rights groups are appalled by the fact that no independent safety tests have been carried out, and by their potential for indiscriminate use.
The weapons are designed to address the perceived shortcomings of the Taser, the electric-shock gun already used by 4000 police departments in the US and undergoing trials with some police forces in the UK.
It hits the victim with two darts that trail current-carrying wires, which limit its range to a maximum of seven metres. As a single shot, short-range weapon, the Taser is of little use in crowd control. And Tasers have no effect on vehicles.
Meanwhile, Xtreme Alternative Defense Systems (XADS), based in Anderson, Indiana, will be one of the first companies to market another type of wireless weapon capable of firing a stream of electricity like water out of a hose at one or many targets in a single sweep," claims XADS president Peter Bitar.
The gun has been designed for the US Marine Corps to use for crowd control and security purposes and is due out in 2005. It is based on early, unwieldy technology and has a range of only three metres, but an operator can debilitate multiple targets by sweeping it across them for "as long as there is an input power source," says Bitar.
Read On (not for the faint hearted)
