All policemen should use tazers as a last resort.

"Last January officers in Llandudno, North Wales, fired the weapon [tazer] at an 89-year-old war veteran who had gone missing from his care home and threatened to cut his throat with a piece of glass. Police said they took the decision to stun him for his own safety, which suggests that none of the officers present was man enough to remove the piece of glass from the feeble grip of a very old man." As preliminary definitions for this debate round, I would like define a few terms that will be referred to within the debate. 1) tazers - weapons with charges that can prove to be lethal 2) last resort - when all options have run out I would like to begin this debate by additionally providing some key observations. My opponent will lead you to believe that a tazer can be a useful tool for police. I concede to the fact that it may be useful, but that it should only be used when all else fails. It is uncalled for when a police officer uses a tazer as a first resort. It is inhumane and clearly shows that the man wielding it is irresponsible. It is claimed that tazers have killed 334 people between 2001 and August 2008 in the US. I will provide a couple hypothetical examples of how bad of an idea it is to allow policemen the tazer to use willy-nilly. =Example One= A routine traffic stop on Highway 99. The police officer pulls over a woman and her 13-year-old daughter for driving 5 miles over the speed limit. The police officer then takes out his 50,000-volt tazer and repeatedly tazes the mother. When simply, the officer could have politely asked for her drivers license and given her a ticket. =Example Two= Two kids decide to play a joke on their grandfather, aged 87. Two kids call 9-1-1 and report that a very elderly man has broken into their house. The police then drive to the caller's house and find the old man sleeping on a sofa. The kids tell the officers that the old man makes weird noises and continues to sleep even though Saturday Night Live is broadcasting. The officers then get furious and leap at the old man with their tazers, shocking him multiple times. =REAL Example 3= The quote comes from Daniel Sylvester, the 46-year-old owner of a security firm, who was walking down the street when a police van screeched to a halt. "He didn't know what they wanted, but obeyed when they told him to approach slowly. 'I then had this incredible jolt of pain on the back of my head,' he explains. The electricity made him spasm; as he fell to the ground, he felt his teeth scatter on the tarmac and his bowels open. Then they shot me again in the head. I can't describe the pain.' (Another victim says it is like someone reached into my body to rip my muscles apart with a fork.') The police then saw he was not the person they were looking for, said he was free to go, and drove off." =REAL Example 4= Eric Hammock of Texas died in April 2005 after receiving more than 20 Taser shocks by Fort Worth police officers. Maurice Cunningham of South Carolina, while an inmate at the Lancaster County Detention Center, was subjected to continuous shock for 2 minutes 49 seconds, which a medical examiner said caused cardiac arrhythmia and his subsequent death. He was 29 years old and had no alcohol or drugs in his system. After provided with these examples and observations it is safe to assume that tazers should only be used by policemen as a last resort. I thank my opponent for accepting this debate. =References= http://www.guardian.co.uk... http://en.wikipedia.org...