Our View - Wednesday

Pretty in pink

Fashion Tasers for self-defense

An exciting new fashion trend has women arming themselves with designer Taser stun guns, in metallic pink, electric blue, titanium silver, black pearl and red hot. It makes buying a weapon more like choosing lipstick, which raises concerns.

Civilian stun guns have been available commercially since the early 1990s, but they’ve always been bulky and ugly. Costing $1,000 and up, few consumers embraced the technology and the devices have been used mostly by cops.

As reported in Tuesday’s Gazette, Taser International has introduced its smaller, sleeker, designer Tasers with consumerfriendly price tags starting at $300. Stun gun dealer Jeff Lepp, owner of Specialty Sports and Supply of Colorado Springs, said the designer Tasers have gained in popularity with recent high profile robberies, carjackings and other violent crimes.

Practical, affordable self-defense weapons enable more Americans to enjoy lives of freedom and mobility. More self-defense weapons will help tame dangerous urban streets, and take the fear out of walks through dark alleys and parking lots at night. A 90-pound weakling — male or female — who isn’t prepared and armed for self-defense is a predator’s favorite prey. Properly trained and armed for self-defense, the meek become formidable foes for those who would do them harm.

But stun guns, however promising, are controversial. Since June 2001, stun guns have killed more than 150 people in the United States. We hope that in most of these cases police used the stun guns in situation where they otherwise would have used regular, old-fashioned guns. It’s tragic if stun guns have been used in circumstances that otherwise would have justified only unarmed physical restraint. Though stun guns pose less of a lethal threat than handguns, the 50,000-volt zap can stop a human heart.

The best weapon for self-defense is a lawfully concealed handgun, after extensive training in its use. For those unwilling to carry a handgun, however, the stun gun provides an alternative that’s better than defenselessness.

Before obtaining and carrying a stun gun, however, one should come to terms with the fact that stun guns can kill. Anyone carrying one has chosen to possess a lethal weapon, just as the citizen who carries a pistol or revolver. Only if one reasonably fears death or imminent serious bodily harm to oneself or another should a stun gun or firearm ever be deployed.

Stun guns could be menacing in the hands of those who view them as something safer than guns. That cavalier mindset can easily lead cops and civilians to use them in situations that wouldn’t justify using a more conventional weapon. That should never happen. Even in metallic pink, a fashion stun gun demands no less respect than an ugly black .45 Glock.

Slapping down liberal double standard

Leaders of a left-leaning Colorado advocacy group want to make one of the state’s leading citizen advocates the next Don Imus. ProgressNowAction has organized a petition campaign to convince advertisers to boycott Jon Caldara’s KOA radio talk show. Caldara, referring to criticism Hillary Clinton received for a faux pas, asked pundit Ann Coulter if she thought Clinton “got bitch-slapped tonight?” Progress-NowAction accuses Caldara of minimizing the crime of domestic violence against women.

Caldara has labored tirelessly over the years to protect Colorado taxpayers from dubious state and local spending schemes, including grandiose and unnecessary public transportation proposals. Today he heads the Independence Institute, a nonprofit that advocates less government and more freedom. That’s why leftists at ProgressNowAction want to silence him, and they’ll use any lame excuse they can concoct.

As reported in the Rocky Mountain News, libertarian blogger Ari Armstrong found that three Front Range progressive newsweeklies — The Colorado Springs Independent, Westword and Boulder Weekly — routinely publish “bitch-slap.” He even found “bitch-slap” on a ProgressNowAction blog.

None of this concerns leaders of ProgressNowAction, who offer no criticism of liberal journalists who use the term.

“We’re much more concerned with what Caldara says,” explained Bobby Clark, deputy director of ProgressNowAction, in an interview with The Gazette. “Caldara has a tremendous sphere of influence. He is a paid spokesman for the right.”

So there you have it, in Clark’s own words. They don’t care if pundits on the left use “bitch-slap” — a common humorous slang — but they’ll organize a boycott when a conservative says it. Clark blamed the Rocky Mountain News for “failing to disclose that Ari Armstrong is an employee of Caldara’s Independence Institute. The story didn’t tell you that, but it’s a fact.”

A fact? Hardly. Armstrong, a freelance writer, said he has volunteered articles to the Independence Institute on speculation, but the organization doesn’t pay him. In one article, published by a Grand Junction newspaper, Armstrong criticized Caldara for defending food stamps.

This much is a fact: ProgressNowAction’s executive director, Michael Huttner, used to work as an intern for Westword — which has published the term or some form of it 12 times in the past 12 years. Apparently Westword’s not “a paid spokesman for the right,” which means its use of the term doesn’t promote domestic violence.

An exhaustive investigation by The Gazette found no organization called “the right” that pays Caldara to speak. It’s time to lightly slap ProgressNowAction for this, the way one might gently admonish a female dog but in a nonthreatening manner that doesn’t advocate wife beating.