Rarely is the question asked, 'Is Our Kids Electrocuted Enough?'

Throughout our great and tolerant nation, more and more school security employees are being issued Tasers to stem the growing threat of children disobeying the power-starved rent-a-cops patrolling their high school campuses. Publicly lauded by police departments across the country, Tasers are often described as a "non-lethal" means of control for high school police officers, who clearly have good reason to fear hormone-possessed teenagers hell-bent on using their cell phones on school grounds.

Except they're not.

Tasers have claimed over 300 lives since 2001, a number that pales in comparison to many other deadly weapons but is staggeringly high for a device that is so widely praised as...well, not supposed to kill people. Turns out passing a 50,000-volt electric current through your body isn't the safest thing to do, especially in the keeping-your-heart-beating department. Proponents will claim that it's not dangerous because the pulses are constantly interrupted, rather than continuous, which would be far more deadly. You'll excuse me for my brutish rejection of such a well-conceived subtlety, but I'm not impressed by the humanity of lots of short 50,000-volt shocks rather than a single, extended one.

Further exacerbating the problem is the increasing level of Taser abuse against people who could easily be restrained by a large dog, much less a person whose career hinges upon their ability to protect us from real criminals. Cops have now been caught Tasering women in their 70s, a 13-year-old girl (weighing in at an intimidating 65 pounds), and pregnant women at routine traffic stops. Isn't it dandy that society is now openly endorsing abuse of women as a legitimate means of fighting crime?

Now, we're supposed to rally around the supplying of Tasers to police officers assigned as security guards in high schools. Well, fuck that. I went to a public high school where it was considered a quiet day if you didn't see at least a few instances of people trying to beat the living shit out of each other. The number of people that died from these encounters? Zero.

That being the case, I'm a little reticent to buy into this idea that additional force is needed to keep our nation's teenagers in check. I'm even more reticent to believe that the use of "electronic control" is needed to keep a student from using his cell phone or acting out in class, both of which have been cited as reasons for the use of Tasers against kids.

And I'm absolutely loathe to believe that anyone thought it was a good idea to tase 43 children of prison employees on Take Your Son/Daughter To Work Day. With their parents' permission, these kids were Tased by prison guards who evidently thought, "These kids just won't appreciate how awesome this thing is unless I pump them full of electricity myself."

Children. Tased. For fun.

To be perfectly honest, I think the most indignant people here should be the police officers. They're being sold the "Big Lie" that Tasers are perfectly safe, when in reality they pose a very real danger even to people who display no pre-existing heart conditions or other indicators that they shouldn't be Tased. Imagine being the cop whose face is plastered all over the evening news because he killed a kid, having been told by Taser distributors that it could never happen.

Even under the banner of safety, I was always under the impression that the philosophy of law enforcement, at least, was to use minimal force to take control of a chaotic situation. In too many of these cases, Tasers are clearly overkill. When six security guards can't remove an unruly student from a John Kerry speech without a Taser, which side of the conflict really deserves the full brunt of the media's scrutiny? I'm worried if the burly guys swaggering around campus don't feel confident that they can take down scrawny, unarmed college kids without lighting them up like a Christmas tree.

You can certainly disagree, but if you do, I'm inclined to believe you're the kind of person who sees disobedient children as one of the really serious problems in America today. Warm up some more milk, Grandpa, the good ol' days are over.