TASER Demonstration In Takoma Park Includes Voluntary TASERing

WASHINGTON -- Want to know what it's like to voluntarily be on the receiving side of a TASER? Um, you're in luck?

Those who attend a TASER demonstration being held in the Maryland suburbs on Sept. 7 "may voluntarily request to have a TASER deployed on them," according to the Takoma Park Police Department media announcement.

The tech blog Gizmodo once evaluated the costs and benefits of being voluntarily TASERed -- that is, going out of your way to be jolted into neuromuscular incapacitation like the 2,000,000 other humans who, according to the manufacturer's website, have had the device employed upon them (most involuntarily).

Costs, the blog found, beside the neuromuscular incapacitation itself, include risks of death or injury, contact with carcinogens, organ damage and permanent scarring. Gizmodo found a hat and commemorative coin to be the main benefits -- rewards that seem not to be on the table in Takoma Park, which is offering only the TASERing itself, and not any extra perks like t-shirts of other souveniers.

Another benefit -- or cost, depending on your perspective -- is the possibility of joining the rich offering of "voluntarily TASERed" videos on YouTube.

(H/T Gazette.net)