Now, this is a shock

This item is from over a month ago, from an October 1 AP story, in fact, but I thought it important enough to bring up even after this extended time.

Phoenix - Taser International Inc. has voluntarily changed some of its broad safety claims and limited its use of the word "non-lethal" in an effort to appease Arizona officials concerned about possibly misleading marketing, officials said Wednesday.

The move by the nation's largest maker of stun guns comes as the Securities and Exchange Commission investigates the company and as the Arizona Attorney General's Office conducts its own inquiry into safety claims. ...

In January, Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard said his office was probing claims Taser has made about safety studies on its products.

The "company officials," it seems, must have been employing some new meaning of the word "voluntarily" of which I've previously been unaware. But to continue:

According to Taser and the Attorney General's Office, the stun gun maker submitted a list of language changes the company has already made, including an 18-point "product warning."

Among the changes, Taser explains that it uses the term non-lethal as defined by the Department of Defense - which doesn't mean the weapon can't cause death, but that it's not intended to be fatal.

Other changes include substituting the phrase "leave no lasting after effects" to "are more effective and safer than other use-of-force options." ...

Amnesty International has compiled a list of more than 100 people the group says have died after being shocked in scuffles with lawmen.

Taser maintains that no deaths have been directly caused by the weapon alone.

That last statement is significant because it is a major step-down for the company, which previously insisted the weapon was innocent in all such cases. This statement, however, admits both that it could be an indirect cause of death and that it could be a direct contributing factor.

Meanwhile, the SEC is

conducting an expanded official investigation of claims Taser has made about safety studies; an end-of-year sale analysts have questioned because it appeared to inflate sales to meet annual projections; and the possibility that outsiders acquired internal company information to manipulate the stock price.

I've said all along about Tasers that they are dangerous weapons. In some ways they are more dangerous than guns in police hands. Not because they are inherently more deadly - they are not - but precisely because their supposed safety would lead them to be used almost casually, as a convenience, a method of enforcing dominance without effort, employed not only in situations where potentially deadly force would otherwise be used, but even in cases where little or no force would otherwise be used. Which is exactly what has happened.

As far as I'm concerned, the suckers should be banned and the sooner Taser Inc. is run to ground, the better.