Noel Neilson-Slabach
Ms. Green
Period 4
12/17/13
Tasers
In Hamilton, Ontario, police officers only pulled the trigger of a gun fourteen times in 2012. In 2011, guns were fired sixty-six times. (Guelph Tribune) The presence of tasers most llikely influenced this sharp decline in gun usage. In 2012, tasers were used forty-nine times, mostly to subdue a mentally ill person. Stun Guns (tasers) are helping the police subdue people who could cause “assaultive and/or serious bodily harm or death behaviors to themselves or another person.” (Guelph Tribune) Before tasers were introduced to Ontario, policemen had a hard time trying to subdue these people without actually shooting them. (Hamilton Spectator) Tasers are greatly aiding police officers in their work to subdue and arrest potentially harmful people.
Places all over Canada and the United States have started having their police force carry tasers with them. According to Police Chief Bryan Larkin of Guelph, Ontario, “if it (tasers) enhance overall community safety it’s something that, in my opinion, we ought to be moving forward.” (Guelph Tribune) Currently, in Canada, only Quebec labels tasers as “prohibited.” Tasers have made a huge difference in the Canadian police force’s efficiency, and should therefore be used more widely than it is being used now. Thanks to the addition of tasers in the police force, police officers in Canada have been able to arrest a total of 782 more people in 2012 than in 2011.
According to a previous interpretation of the Firearms Act in Canada, tasers were considered to be “prohibited weapons” and could only be used by members of law-enforcement agencies after they were imported into the country under a special permit. (The Kitchener/Cambridge/Waterloo) A 2008 review of the Firearms Act found that the act classifies
“the Taser Public Defender and any variant or modified version of it” as “prohibited firearms.” However, Canadian police forces typically...