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I\u2019m big on guns for personal defense, but at the same time, I\u2019m not a big fan of killing people. That may sound contradictory, as shooting someone to defend yourself can easily (and often does) involve death. But, we have to keep in mind that the goal of a legitimate defensive shoot isn\u2019t to kill. The goal is to incapacitate, and hopefully cause them to stop what they\u2019re doing (trying to kill you or someone else) before they\u2019re done doing it.<\/p>\n
Sadly, today\u2019s technology doesn\u2019t give us a lot of alternatives to shooting if it\u2019s rapid incapacitation we need. Pepper spray and tasers are the obvious alternative, but pepper spray relies on pain compliance an emotional or drug-addicted person can fight through, and tasers aren\u2019t good against deadly force because there\u2019s no guarantee that both darts connect and complete the circuit. So, we\u2019re stuck with having to stop the action through the pain of getting shot, rapid blood loss or through damage to neural tissue. Given the time constraints of a defensive encounter, we don\u2019t usually get to choose which one we go for.<\/p>\n
But, in the world of science fiction, we have other options. It may seem silly to compare fictional weapons (even if that\u2019s fun), but we have to keep in mind that many things that are real today started out as fake things on the TV or movie screen. By comparing these weapons, we can figure out what things are worth pursuing and what things really don\u2019t help us defend ourselves better.<\/p>\n
Science Fiction Weapons That Suck<\/h3>\n
Before I get to what I think\u2019s great, I want to start with a few weapons that I think stink, especially for defensive use. This will not be an exhaustive list of all sci-fi weapons that suck, so feel free to come up with more in the comments or on social media.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll start with a sacred cow: blasters in the Star Wars<\/em> universe. While the little bolts of plasma pistols and rifles in Star Wars<\/em> send are highly destructive upon arrival and cause nearly instant incapacitation (assuming they don\u2019t hit a main character), they also have the problem of being inaccurate in many cases. Plus, blaster bolts only move at about 194 feet per second (per Mythbusters), making them stoppable by, say, a Jedi.<\/p>\nThe bigger problem with most blasters is that they don\u2019t have a stun setting that people want to use. In all of the live action movies, the stun setting on a blaster gets used only once, and seems to spread out across a whole room before striking the target. In animation, stun rings look to be more concentrated, but still don\u2019t get used all that much. If the stun setting isn\u2019t good enough for even the good guys to use, it\u2019s probably not good enough for us to depend on.<\/p>\n
The staff weapon from the Stargate<\/em> TV and movie universe suffers from a similar problem to blaster bolts: slow moving, highly destructive and not terribly accurate. Here\u2019s a segment from Stargate SG1<\/em> where we see this explained:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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