Advantage to the use of tasers by law enforcement officials Essay

Advantage to the use of tasers by law enforcement officials - Essay Example As Hemenway and Weil explain, â€Å"guns in the United States currently exact a terrible toll: over 1,500 accidental deaths per year, close to 12,000 homicides and more than 17,000 suicides† (94). In other words, apart from the deliberate use of guns in the commission of crimes, guns are responsible for thousands and thousands of preventable deaths per year. Despite this, however, the very notion of banning firearms is unrealistic. The American public believes that it has an inalienable right to bear arms for the purposes of self-defence and, given Constitutional provisions supporting this right, it is unrealistic to assume that any gun ban proposal will ever successfully pass into federal legislature and be effectively implemented (Hemenway and Weil, 94-96). Added to that, if law enforcement officials are to effectively fight the crime pandemic, they must be armed. The situation, as described, presents policy makers and law enforcement with a paradox. Our nation’s crime rates are soaring. A Department of Justice publication reports that almost 1,500,000 million violent crimes were committed in 2005 (FBI, 2006). Approximately one million and a half murders, rapes and armed robberies were committed across the United States in a single year. Not only does this figure evidence the extent to which crime has reached pandemic proportions in the country but underscores the nature of the on-the-job dangers which law enforcement officers confront every singe day. To confront the crime pandemic, law enforcement officers must