News is coming in that yet another young man has died after being blasted by a police TASER. By my count, this latest fatality is the 355th TASER-related death in North America.

It is difficult to come to any conclusion but that a TASER is like a 50,000 volt lightning bolt: in the majority of cases the recipient experiences enormous shock and excruciating pain but sometimes, as with lightning, the victim’s heart stops and he can’t be revived.

It is unbelievable to me that this weapon was introduced to Canadian police without any public consultation or independent safety testing and that policy-makers continue to dither about whether to remove it from the police arsenal until adequate testing and research has been done. One thing is certain; as long as police use the weapon, more people will die.