By Jim Hagarty
I have recently read some interesting newspaper articles which have cleared everything up for me regarding the Taser, the stungun used by police – and, in the U.S., by private citizens – to keep people under control.
As it turns out, the Taser is as harmless as a declawed kitten and is saving lives at rates rivalling the records set by squads of paramedics across the country. Last year in Canada alone, as many as 1,400 lives were saved by this handy little device which shoots 50,000 volts of electricity into the bodies of the people who, as it turns out, are lucky enough to be Tasered, rather than shot with a bullet or two. Even the fellow who got one of those little devils in the eyeball, the body part through which he will never see again, should be happy nothing worse than that happened to him.
I did have a fleeting doubt – if the Taser is so harmless, why do people need special training to use it – but I realized that that is probably just a technicality. Are the people in the U.S. who are buying the private ones, painted in pink or in camouflage colours or Valentine’s Day red (“If you love her, protect her”) receiving hours of in-depth training at a police college? I have decided they are probably not, so this is further proof the thing is harmless.
However, while I am reassured on the one hand and happy to know that I’ll never be killed by a Taser, wielded by private citizen or police officer, an alarming piece of information conveyed in one story I read has me lying awake at night in fear. Apparently, the common doorknob can fire off as much as 100,000 volts of electricity if you touch it after shuffling across your carpet in your slippers. This is twice the power of the Taser and it is now clear to me: My chance of death by doorknob are many times greater than termination by Taser.
Doorknobs, it turns out, are all around me, and while it is doubtful I’ll see a live Taser from one year to another, it occurs to me I can hardly go 10 feet in my house without encountering another knob. Worse than that, in my ignorance, I even installed several doors in my basement over the years and attached doorknobs to them. Like everyone, I have my down days, but I did not know I had such a deep death wish to actually boobytrap my own abode.
In fact, it seems to me, we are all in danger, no group more than our seniors who we allow to shuffle around in slippers in their final years, touching doorknobs wherever they go. Is this not some form of elder abuse of the most subtle, shocking kind?
I have now, I’m afraid, developed quite a fear of doorknobs and as it turns out, there is a word to describe it: knobaphobia. I have sent my slippers to the landfill and I am considering tearing up our carpets so no one in our family is ever harmed by the deadly static electricity waiting patiently for us at every doorway.
The company which makes the Taser claims that in the cases of the almost 300 people who have died after being Tasered, not one death has been directly proven to have been caused by the gun. I am now in full agreement with their position. Researchers need to look further into these tragedies and I believe if they do, they will find that in every case, those unfortunate folks had been in contact with a doorknob, maybe even several – before they were Tasered. The hundreds of thousands of volts of knob power pulsing through their bodies had weakened their systems, obviously, rendering them vulnerable to further shocks. These people are being Weisered, yet do we hear a word of complaint about Weiser, one of the biggest manufacturers of knobs?
Yes, keep the Taser, by all means. Use it more, in fact. Thousands of lives will be saved if it is.
But ban the doorknob!
As it turns out, it holds the key to this problem.
It’s an open and shut case!
