Between Freedom Sight and Hell in a Handbasket there has been some discussion about tasers and my previous taser post: Self Defense Use of Tasers.

My earlier post was not about home defense scenarios, but rather street confrontations. It was my oversight to not consider the taser for home defense. I think this oversight was due to the fact that the Taser is totally unsuitable for this role.

One of the problems is that assuming you successfully deployed your Taser on the intruder, the big question is what do you do now? You are stuck with being in close proximity to the intruder because the consumer version of the Taser has a 15' range. If he hasn't broken a lead or dislodged a probe you could certainly give him another zap and hope for compliance until the police arrive.

The question of batteries is a good one, and another major limitation of the system that I should have thought of before. Unless you are very disciplined about making sure you replace the batteries on a regular basis you will have a non-functional Taser when you need it. I don't know what the shelf life of CR123 batteries is, but it is not indefinite.

My problem with Tasers isn't that they aren't effective, it's that when they fail they fail catastrophically. You only get one shot, it has to be taken at a very close distance, you have to hit with both darts, and it is only going to work as long as both darts are in contact and you have battery power. If you shoot the intruder across the dining room table and his fall dislodges a probe he is back in the fight no worse for wear. In my Taser operators course there was a lot of time and verbiage spent on having a plan B for the case that the Taser doesn't work.

On one of the forums somebody did make a point about Tasers being "handgun-lite" in terms of political perception and being a choice for people who aren't going to do what is necessary to become proficient with firearms. Anything that makes self-defense more mainstream isn't all bad, but the Taser is not the fire-and-forget self defense solution it is being marketed as.