I had to elaborate on Tony’s clever post about the fun-in-the-stun state of Arizona. I am shocked at the idea of personal tasers becoming as ubiquitous as Tupperware!
Did you ever carry pepper spray, or Mace as it was known when I was in college? It was pitched to women as a sure-fire way to stop a predator in his tracks. Just spray it in an assailant’s eyes and he’ll stumble around yelling “Ah, my eyes! my eyes!” long enough for his prey to flee.
There is a new protection device available from an Arizona company called Shieldher. It is, I kid you not, a personal taser, the TASER® C2. To soften the outright horror at the thought of our already over-armed streets filling with more weaponry, the Shieldher taser comes in innocuous and feminine colors like metallic pink. I imagine this is meant to discourage macho would-be criminals, who might otherwise be inclined to carry one of these weapons to subdue recalcitrant victims.
Shieldher is aware of the TASER® C2’s potential for misuse:
Our mission is to pacify the fears we face daily as women in an effort to increase the quality of our lives! We have received numerous calls and emails that validate the need for this product and we are committed, at Shieldher, to providing the product in a manner that reinforces it as a personal safety device NOT a weapon.
Undeterred by the overwhelming likelihood of sinister usage, the company touts the benefits of the personal taser:
The TASER® C2 transmits electrical pulses along the wires and into the body of the target, overstimulating the sensory and motor functions of the peripheral nervous system, causing overwhelming incapacitation.
I have a daughter going off to college in the fall and, once I overcame my initial horror at the very notion of personal tasers, I began to play with the idea that perhaps it wouldn’t be such a bad idea. I rather relish the idea of the grabby cocksure frat boy writhing on the ground much to the delight of his drunken brothers.
But mere moments later I recalled what has been beaten into my brain over the years by gun control advocates. A handgun carried for personal protection is far more likely to be used against its owner than his or her assailant. I feel certain that the same will be true for the personal taser. How long until the stopped becomes the stopper? How long until Shieldher’s newly-empowered female client encounters a pretty pink taser tucked neatly into the back pocket of anyone desiring her overwhelming incapacitation?
The war on drugs. Oh yes, it’s a nasty endless little war, one that’s filling our prisons with small-time users/entrepreneurs and costing the taxpayers billions. It’s a war that hasn’t helped our poor addicted countrymen one iota, and it’s a war for which win-happy Bush has not yet declared victory. But neither has he hung his head in defeat, which he certainly should. 
Before it became the Neocon Swastika, bumper sticker peer pressure to show unquestioning support for the troops, i.e. their mission of US military aggression, the “yellow ribbon” was a musical high concept of the 70s via Tony Orlando and his Dawns. Tie a Yellow Ribbon was sung from the POV of a felon, rehabilitated we presume, being released and hoping for a signal from his old lady, in advance of having to ask her face to face, to know if he was welcome to come back home. Perhaps he had no idea because she had not visited him in prison or perhaps there was a restraining order which forbid him from approaching without her prior consent.
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