For the love of...!
Listen, it is not that insanely easy for people to get this kind of technology! THIS THING IS JUST OUT OF THE PROTOTYPE PHASE! I can still only be mounted on VEHICLES. It won't penetrate a solid barrier, like oh, say, a goddamn wall. It WON'T kill you, it can't even penetrate your epidermis, unless the users have full intent to kill you and jack up the force as much as possibe, in which case it's no different from some pistol you pick up out of the local gunstore. Used in an Urban enviornment, it's range would be liimited to sight.
HOW ****ING OFTEN DO YOU SEE THE ELDERLY OR EXTREMELY YOUNG PARTICIPATING IN A RIOT?! This is a RIOT SUPPRESSION DEVICE. It is as unnatural and SUPREMELY UNFAIR to assume some secret shadow government or corrupt police officer is going to use this stuff to torture Joe Average as it is to naturally assume they'll lock you down in a seat and spray mace in your face all day or tickle you with a ****ing feather till you can't breathe. You'd have better odds of being mauled by a shark in Arizona.
"Or how long until some kid replicates it using a few magnetrons and a metal box for directional containment? Add a car battery and instant schoolyard winner?" Are you serious? Just...wow. I could buy something that performs much the same function. It's called a prank shock lighter
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@Quest_techie: Shove your ignorance speech and Bush-esque Fear-mongering. Naivete is superbly demonstrated in your own post, assuming the few videos some idiots posted on Youtube is representative of the U.S. Police Force as a whole? Spare me the nonsense, please. It's even more ludicrous to actually believe that your average police officer is going to hijack a Jeep loaded with the most advanced Laser-based Suppression device to come out in recent years and blast various innocent people in the face.
I can barely keep the flood of incredulity I feel towards your points contained.
wow, so you ARE a moron
police regularly swab protesters in lines and other non mobile situations <folk who chain themselves to trees> with pepper spray that is FAR from mace, again, candycanes and gumdrops, elderly protesters, what about all those aging hippies? I see a fair number of quite old protesters, also, paents of people in iraq, a lot of them are quite old, spouses of reactivated soldiers, since they upped the age for reactivation, dang, they've gotten into a pretty old age bracket too
and did you ever consider that heart disease, epilepsy and many other disorders that electroshock can set off, though often age linked <though epilepsy kicking in at puberty, hardly the age I suspect you were thinking> rarely show outward signs, and I wonder what the statistics are for people who are not elderly, but have electro magnetic devices that assist with the regulation of body function, I do not simplify to pace makers because in DBS a similar device is used to treat schizophrenia, depression, epilepsy, bipolar disorder, and a range of other diseases
gee, seems you are just spewing your ignorance as hard as you can eh?
this has nothing to do with "shadow governments" wow, paranoid aren't we? it has to do with the fact that often, when kit gets small and economical it gets down to street level, and if you didn't have your head where the sun doesn't shine you would see that miniturization is clearly a goal, it is a goal with any weapon system, lethal or non, as is making it more economical, the fact that this decive leaves no mark makes it extremly attractive to someone who wants to abuse their power in a position of authority, many police officers are police officers because they want that authority to be able to use it on other people, I am not saying most, I am not saying all, I am saying many, I am saying enough to make this a problem, I am saying that when I watch the interviews with police officers after the chicago dnc in the 60's whenever someone mentions hitting a kneecap or something and doing severe damage, which the messed up folk do there is a very disturbing manner about the way in which they do it
some learned cynicism and wisdom added to your bag of tricks would do you well, I disagree with you because I have seen what happens when people with lesser capabilities are given a better way to do their evil, as it is only a corrupt officer with some of his wits about him can get away with something, those who aren't smart enough to cover up the marks from the taser or the club don't get to think about abusing their power, with this mechanism, which will eventually get into more hands, more people will be able to abuse it, and sans the forensic trail to shut down those who would abuse this power this is indeed a dangerous path
I fear it in military hands, but I fear it in law enforcement hands far more