Can We Have A Better Choice Then Shoot to Kill Please?
In the aftermath of the Paris Attacks, Britain’s politicians debated the question of, “Shoot to Kill”, and as is normal in Britain, this debate was accompanied by a flutter of articles, social media commentary and talk shows, where the wider public also discussed the same question.
The finer side of commentary, delved into current police procedures. People discussed the meaning of terms like, “minimum force”, “shoot to wound”, and “imminent danger”. While the dog fights on social media, would frequently be fought on the grounds, of whether opposing shoot to kill, makes one a “Terrorist Sympathiser”, or supporting it makes one a “Fascist” .
Can we have a “shoot to stop” option, please?
However the debate ignored the big question, why are weapons, the way they are? Why can we not shoot to stop. Did inventors and innovators, have a lapse in imagination, that has spanned a few hundred years. What obstacle lay in the path for them, that prohibited thinking differently.
If people had thought differently, maybe Jean Charles de Menezes would be alive. He was shot dead, at a London Tube station after being mistaken for a terror suspect. While in fact, He was a 27 year old Brazilian electrician, running to work because he was late. He needed a, “Shoot To Stop” and there was none available.
There are alternatives, a “Taser”, can “shoot to subdue”. It is a weapon firing barbs attached by wires to batteries, which gives a short electric shock to a person.
A taser is shown in use, in a video which has done the rounds on social media,where a group of police in a country which will not be named, taser a mentally ill man a hundred times, his body jerks around like a puppet on a string. The police are not trying to arrest him, they are trying to help him, they want to subdue him enough, to take him to the hospital. One of the police women is saying quite clearly, if he would only calm down and stay still they would not have to hurt him.
And my question is, Why does a taser have to hurt? What happened to the inventors and innovators in the world. Surely there is something that can subdue like a taser, without pain. When did the small arms industry become so devoid of imagination, Or the people pottering away in their basements or the entrepreneurs, that watch the news. Or even the many government offices when they wrote their specification for tender. Did somebody just forget to articulate that half a line saying, “And its got to be painless…”.
Why do we still think in medieval ways about social issues, yet we can be sci-fi about entertainment?
Bibliography
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/nov/17/shoot-to-kill-what-is-the-uks-policy
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33066098
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/industry/engineering/12078039/prince-philip-duke-of-edinburgh-engineers-population-growth-royal-family.html
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/01/maxim-guns/428253/?utm_source=SFTwitter
Previous Posts
On Choice
- Good Robots
- Can we have a better choice then “Shoot to Kill”, please?
- Inventors, Engineers, Innovators — Where are you?
- Changing the Options on Killer Robots
- Have you seen this virus?
On Truth
- Understanding Data in War and Peace
- News Neutrality and News Integrity — societies need for impartial and truthful information.
- Has Anybody Seen the Truth Lately?
On Change
On Progress
- Art, Heart and Progress — Art Activism
- Art, Heart and Progress — The Artists
- Art, Heart and Progress — Photography
- Walking Backwards Slowly
- The Devil Is in The Detail
