PHOENIX – The nation’s largest stun-gun manufacturer is working on a new way to deliver electricity to the human body: through 12-gauge shotgun shells.
Though the gun still is being developed, Taser International Inc. says the new product will allow police officers and U.S. troops to hit someone from a much greater distance than its current line of Tasers, which Amnesty International has cited in more than 120 deaths.
The eXtended Range Electro-Muscular Projectile, or XREP, will be a shotgun shell designed to combine the blunt-force trauma of a fast-moving baseball with the electrical current of a stun gun.
“It will truly cause incapacitation,” company spokesman Steve Tuttle said.
Taser hopes to release the product in 2007. The Office of Naval Research supplied the approximately $500,000 it took to develop the shotgun shells, Tuttle said.
The company has been selling its stun-gun weapons to law enforcement agencies since 1998. Today, more than 175,000 Tasers are being used by more than 8,500 agencies in the United States. More than 100,000 of the devices have been sold to private U.S. citizens, and U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq also use them, Tuttle said.
Tasers shoot two barbed darts that deliver 50,000-volt jolts to the human body using a special electrical wave form that overwhelms the nervous system and temporarily paralyzes people.
But the weapons, considered by the company to be low-level-force devices, can hit a target only about 25 feet away.
Test models of the XREP shells currently reach 100 feet, though the military has challenged the company to extend the range to 330 feet, the company said.
“It’s going to give you a pretty good thump when it hits,” said Taser President Tom Smith, “but our design goal is to make it safe even at the muzzle.”
When deployed, a round will hit a target, latch on and deliver an incapacitating jolt of electricity. Smith said company engineers still were working on how the shell will latch on to suspects, but said the shells will have the same incapacitating effect as traditional Tasers because they will use the same electrical wave form.
But the Taser XREP shotgun shell will be considered a higher-level use of force because of the physical impact of the shell.
Already, the product is drawing criticism from human rights organizations, who have accused law-enforcement agencies of using the existing Tasers when more humane options are available.
“Amnesty’s concern with this product would be similar to those with Tasers being used currently,” Amnesty International spokesman Edward Jackson said. “Where is the independent comprehensive medical testing? In the absence of that testing, we run the risk of turning private citizens into guinea pigs.”
According to Amnesty International’s count, more than 120 people shocked with a Taser in the United States and Canada have died shortly afterward.
Taser denies its products are solely to blame in any deaths, arguing that drugs, health conditions or other factors – not the electrical shock – have been the cause. The company also contends Tasers have saved the lives of thousands of suspects who might otherwise have been shot by police.
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