For executives as Taser International, this should be the best day, ever. The company just signed a $1.8 million deal with the Pentagon the largest in Taser's history.
But the stun-gun maker can't shake allegations that their supposedly "non-lethal" weapons have killed more than a few of their targets.
"In the past nine months, five people in Georgia, including three in metro Atlanta, have died after being shocked with Tasers by law enforcement officers. Nationally, 26 people who were shocked with Tasers while in custody died during that period as many as had died in the previous 4 1/2 years the guns had been in use," the Atlanta Journal-Constitution notes.
"Las Vegas police will re-evaluate Taser gun training after a coroner's jury blamed the death of a handcuffed man on repeated shocks with the stun gun," KRNV-TV adds.
No death has ever been successfully pinned on the Taser in court, the company asserts. According to the AJC, "Tom Smith, president and co-founder of Taser International, says the guns have been used safely by law enforcement officers in the field more than 45,000 times since 1999 and used safely more than 100,000 times including demonstration firings. The increase in the number of deaths of people shocked by Tasers simply reflects the increased use of the weapons, the company says."
American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan have been turning more and more to the electric shock weapons, to control crowds and keep prisoners in line. An Army report, released last year, said the Tasers worked particularly well in Iraq, because Saddam had tortured so many with electricity.
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