Nick Dial interview on The Terry Gilberg Show, KFYI

Nick Dial (previous post, [LINK]) was on the Terry Gilberg Show with KFYI Fox News Radio Phoenix, AZ on 24 October 2009.

Mr. Dial was asked to speak about the issues surrounding the taser, its marketing, and its appropriate use by law enforcement.

The audio podcast is available here: [MP3] (40 minutes duration, file size about 12MB).


My observations:

Being a talk radio program, and affiliated with Fox, and located in Taser International's own backyard (Phoenix, AZ), these circumstances ... make me very happy to see some conservative folks on the taser-critical side of the debate. It proves that this moral and legal issue doesn't have to be a Left versus Right debate. I've actually stated that the Right-leaning folks with 'Law and Order' inclinations should be the first ones to complain about corporate malfeasance.

It's clear that the other two callers were very frightened that police officers "will have their tasers taken away". This fear is not completely irrational, but their response isn't exactly rational. [A temporary taser moratorium is certainly an option to push the big reset button, and start fresh with a new approach and a new attitude. And a permanent moratorium (recall) on the most deadly version (the X26) seems to me to be a perfectly reasonable suggestion.]

But a moratorium on tasers is unlikely, at least in the USA. The rather extreme and misdirected reaction from these callers ("Please don't take our tasers away, wah wah wah...") is something worth exploring further when time allows. More later on that topic...

But a total moratorium on tasers is not what Nick Dial is calling for!

Nick Dial just wants the risks to be stated clearly, stop the mixed-up messages, treat the tasers as serious, dangerous and potentially deadly weapons.

These views are about as controversial as apple pie.

The host, Terry Gilberg, gets it.

But the two other callers to this show displayed very poor listening and comprehension skills. They both demonstrated a mindless knee-jerk reaction to any criticism of the false assurances of safety and deceptive marketing approaches used by Taser International. It was excellent that both Ms. Gilberg and Mr. Dial explicitly identified the error in their statements, and moved the discussion back on-topic.