Don't tase me, bro

Prepare yourself for another 2 weeks of non-stop Robert Dziekanski footage, as the news programs cover the apparent Taser death of 17 year old Michael Langan, along with the resulting cries from the irrational masses to "ban the Taser".

Unlike PITT and JDS (who I'm not saying are irrational ... although they might be on occasion), I DO support the use of Tasers. Like I wrote back here

the death of Robert Dziekanski was regrettable, and the police may have been a little trigger-happy with their 50,000 volt toys, but it is undebatable that the use of a Taser is still a far better option than the use of a gun in subduing an unruly person in close quarters.

While all of the details have yet to come out, it appears this kid put himself in that position:

"They repeatedly asked him to disarm himself and to drop the knife," const. Jacqueline Chaput said. "The male refused to comply and at that point the electronic control device was deployed.

Remind you of anybody else?

The mother says "they might as well have taken a gun and shot my son." Well, you know what? That's exactly what they would have done if they didn't have Tasers. At least with Tasers there's better than a 99% chance he'll live.

Every use of the Taser should be reviewed to ensure the circumstances were appropriate (shooting each other in the ass at a party is not appropriate, by the way), but ban the Taser? Fuck that. If you support banning Tasers then you support increased death of idiots who don't understand that threatening other people puts yourself in harm's way as well. I guess you could call it natural selection, but I'm an old softy and I think that these idiots should at least be given a fair chance to survive the encounter and turn their lives around.