Debate heats up over US stun gun laws
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Police used a taser gun on a student during a speech by Senator John Kerry in Florida (file photo) (Reuters)
In the United States, a string of ugly incidents in the past week has prompted calls for stun guns to be better regulated.
Police say the guns, which emit electricity rather than bullets, are an important tool of their trade.
But they can be dangerous and in one particularly graphic case, a police video shows a handcuffed woman being repeatedly zapped.
A grainy video shows 38-year-old Heidi Gill in the back of a police car, clearly distressed, screaming and struggling following her arrest after an argument in a bar.
At one point the woman tries to kick out the car window, but the policeman fires his stun gun and Ms Gill screams and pleads for help.
Even though she is handcuffed, the video shows her being zapped again and again.
The police officer is now on paid leave. Ms Gill says she feared for her life.
"I didn't think I was going to make it out of there - that was going through my mind. I just wanted the pain to stop," she said.
The incident happened at the start of the month, but the video was only recently released, adding to an increasingly angry debate about stun guns or tasers, as they are called.
Last week, police in California tasered a 15-year-old autistic boy who was acting suspiciously but non-violently.
Taylor Karras was running in and out of traffic, but instead of being hit by a car, he was hit by 50,000 volts of electricity.
"I gave up by doing this and then they tasered me and I laid down, I got down," he said.
"I was on the ground and they tasered me again."
Around the same time, Senator John Kerry gave a speech at a university in Florida.
A student asked an interminable and rather silly question and suddenly the microphone was cut off, followed by several police officers surrounding the student.
He was dragged away and when he struggled, the police brought out their stun guns.
The student appeared highly distressed.
"Don't tase me, bro! Don't tase me!" he screamed.
The university's student president, Benjamin Dictor, quickly demanded a change in police policy.
"For a question to be met with arrest, not to mention physical violence, is completely unacceptable in the United States, especially in the halls of education," he said.
Taser safety
Tasers are used in 44 countries but they are particularly popular in the US.
The police say the weapons are a crucial alternative to guns that fire bullets rather than electricity, but that does not means tasers are harmless.
According to one media report, more than 50 people have died after being tasered in the past six years.
Amnesty International says there were more than 270 taser-related deaths in that period. Some US states have banned the use of stun guns.
The rules governing tasers are different in every state, which means there is little consistent rules on how many times someone can be zapped or for how long.
Police officer Alan Goldberg says the stun guns are safe.
"Having been tased a number of times myself, I can attest to the fact that I'm still here, that there was no permanent injury," he said.
The company that manufactures the weapons says more than 50 wrongful death cases have been brought against it, and it has won all of them.
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