[marricks]

That is such a false dichotomy.

Consider arming police officers with tasers. We were promised it would be an alternative to guns and help protect civilians but instead police officers use tasers a ton and still shoot people a ton as well.[1]

There’s always the excuse new smarter technologies will save lives but it ends up the “safer” they are the lower the threshold to use.

1. Da_chicken’s reply below has a good source!

[da_chicken]

Research as shown that when police are armed with tasers, they will use them in situations where previously no violence would have been used at all. Additionally, tasers will be used not just to subdue an individual who is a threat, but also simply to punish those who fail to comply. Further, the police will ignore the safety limitations which would prohibit repeated use of a taser.

You cannot escape the law of unintended consequences.

https://www.alternet.org/story/149115/the_6_most_shocking_ca...

[ntsplnkv2]

You can escape it if you actually think about the scenario on the ground.

A taser can't replace a gun, it doesn't function like a gun, it's not as reliable as a gun, it doesn't have the range, etc.

But it can be useful in lieu of physical force or if someone is resisting, which is what became its use case.

[PavlovsCat]

> These men were able to give the counsel they gave because they were operating at an enormous psychological distance from the people who would be maimed and killed by the weapons systems that would result from the ideas they communicated to their sponsors. The lesson, therefore, is that the scientist and technologist must, by acts of will and of the imagination, actively strive to reduce such psychological distances, to counter the forces that tend to remove him from the consequences of his actions. He must -- it is as simple as this -- think of what he is actually doing.

-- Joseph Weizenbaum in "Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment To Calculation" written in 1976, more timely than ever