Sweeping stun guns to target crowds

[dmr]

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996014

Sweeping stun guns to target crowds
19:00 16 June 04

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.

At present, commercial stun guns target one person at a time, and work only at close quarters. The new breed of non-lethal weapons can be used on many people at once and operate over far greater distances.

But 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 (see graphic). As a single shot, short-range weapon, the Taser is of little use in crowd control. And Tasers have no effect on vehicles.

More .....


Taser success rates by distance

Edit: Clarity

[LittleApple81]

1. Let's see, nice islands to emigrate to? Any ideas? Saying while crying.nt

[xxqqqzme]

2. but will it B ready

in time 4 the rethug NY gathering?

[dmr]

6. I think they said 2005 n/t

[phaseolus]

3. any physicists in the house???

I'm a lowly engineer who didn't pass Electromagnetic Fields & Waves, but I'm thinking there will be several problems --

1. In order to incapacitate a large number of people, you would need a huge amount of energy, implying a huge power supply. This wouldn't be a simple handheld thing -- I'm thinking truck-mounted, and very expensive.

2. Control. Since sparky things seem to find basically one path, even though it might snake around a little, wouldn't it be hard to steer the damn thing? One or two victims might get a lethal dose, and others wouldn't get touched. Ineffective as crowd control (except maybe for a terror aspect) and exposing users/manufacturers to liability. And might it possibly be capable of biting the operators in the ass?

3. With the article's mention of conductive fibers and plasmas and stuff, wouldn't these be ineffective except in perfect, still, dry weather?

[Pallas180]

4. Since Darpa is sponsoring it, aka Poindexter of the US Govt, there

will be no worry about lawsuits. This weapon is for crowd control, think protesters, and apparently they have already refined the weapon.

Welcome to Orwell's world.

[dmr]

5. I wonder how it will affect those with

cardiac conditions, or if they have a pacemaker.

My son has a steel plate in his hip, will it conduct this electricity? If so, he would be killed, wouldn't he?