Gold Coast - ...The 38-year-old man, who has a history of mental illness, is recovering in Gold Coast Hospital from a gunshot wound to the left leg. ...Police said the man was standing in his driveway yelling at them to shoot him but he then ran inside before rushing out a side gate wielding a knife. He came within metres of the two police, before the senior officer, a sergeant, shot him, causing him to fall to the ground. ... He sustained a non-life threatening bullet wound to the leg, needing 10 stitches. ... [LINK]
See also [LINK].
The local media is making much of the reported fact that the police lacked holsters for their reassuringly-expensive tasers, and thus were left with no option except to shoot the man as he ran towards them with a knife.
First of all, given the unacceptably high rate of taser misses and ineffective deployments, using a taser when a mental man with a knife is rushing towards you could be the last mistake you ever make.
Second, this incident ended reasonably well. The police are to be credited with achieveing a reasonably good outcome in the face of an extreme situation.
Third, for those that are overly-concerned that the subject's leg needed ten stiches, and thinking that a taser wound cause less damage... ...consider the case of the fourteen year old girl that was tasered and required EIGHTEEN STAPLES AND SIX STICHES to close the gapping head wound. [LINK][LINK]
Rather than providing an example where a taser would have been handy, this incident is actually an example where using a taser would have been extremely risky and might have resulted in several officers being stabbed and the subject being shot to death anyway. As it is, given the extreme nature of the incident, things turned out just fine.
Attempting to turn this incident into pro-taser propaganda is just that, propaganda.
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