Issue date: 2/9/09 Section: Opinion

In response to Vineet Tiruvadi's article "Guns of tommorow, laws of today." Tiruvadi fails to adequately question the society in which we live, and the true effectiveness of current non-ethal weapons. Instituting a gun-culture reminiscent of the one in Britain, Japan or even Canada, negates the fact that these gun cultures weren't founded on the same principles our gun culture was. Gun enthusiasts, even a self-pronounced "gun-toting liberal," will acknowledge the fact that a shift to nonlethal weapons in this country would be as popular and effective as a shift from beer to root beer. Now, the effectiveness of "nonlethal" weapons has always been a stigma on the use of such weapons. While firearms are of a last resort to law enforcement and civilians alike, they have been proven to more effectively neutralize an immediate threat to someone's life when compared to current non-lethal weapons. While the improvement of these weapons has seen a dramatic rise in the past decade, the level of effectiveness is not yet comparable to that of firearms, while at the same time questions of inhumane nonlethal weapons, such as the Active Denial System, will undoubtedly arise.

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