"You cannot call it real pain. I just found that time was infinitely long."

Says Antoine di Zazzo, who's been tasered more 50 times. Di Zazzo — a Taser representative in France — has tasered the French politician Jean-Marie Le Pen and offered to taser the French president Nicolas Sarkozy. Sarkozy declined the offered but made a campaign promise to arm the country's 300,000 police with tasers.

National Front leader Le Pen, who was 79 at the time, went to inspect the gun last year because of the headlines it made when Sarkozy made his pledge as interior minister. "He did not want to try it but I took him a bit by surprise," said di Zazzo.

"He has special protection because he is a leading politician but I got round them and fired into his shoulder. He fell over but got up again and then went around telling people: 'You are shaking the hand of the man who has tried Sarkozy's toy'."

Now, that's really strange. Why is di Zazzo out bragging about this, instead of in prison?

Meanwhile, reports of deaths by Taser are getting a lot of attention:

There has been much debate in Canada after a 40-year-old Polish man died last month after he was 'tasered' by police. Another 36-year-old man died Saturday five days after an altercation with police who used a Taser to subdue him.

There have been at least three other deaths this week in the United States after police use of the Taser.

Amnesty International has said there have been about 300 deaths around the world after Taser use and has called for it to be suspended while a full investigation into the impact is conducted.

On Friday, the UN Committee said the stun gun "causes acute pain, constituting a form of torture".

Taser International says that no death has been attributed to the use of the gun and that the controversy is caused by misunderstanding of new technology. It has won more than 50 legal cases in the United States alleging the gun was linked to a death.

"If electricity was to kill it would do so straight away," said di Zazzo. "In most of these cases people have carried on fighting or struggling after they were hit by the Taser and had recovered. In a lot of these cases there is a drug overdose or cerebral delirium involved."

"In Canada, the man carried on struggling afterwards and was hit by batons and the police knelt on him. You can also die from being hit with a baton or knelt on," he added.

Taser says its device "saves lives" because it is an effective alternative to a real gun. Each stun round is videod by a camera on the gun for future evidence.

Anyway, it seems to me that Taser has the better side of that argument. We're talking about disabling someone who is a current threat — an alternative to the use of some other weapon. This is different from the question of inflicting pain on someone who is already restrained. Or do you think that the use of pain to disable a person ought to be considered torture and that police ought to be required to use a weapon that disables by damages a person's body?

I was interested to see that there is a camera built into the guns used in France. I see there's talk in the U.S. of adding these $400 accessories to tasers.

Taser Cams are like in-car videos and serve two primary functions," said Peoria Police Chief Steven Settingsgaard. "First, they can prevent abuse by their mere existence. More importantly, however, they can disprove false allegations of misuse when they arise."...

The Peoria County Jail already use Taser Cams... Sheriff Mike McCoy said..."You see what the Taser sees. It answers a whole lot of questions, and it's a factual tool for us."

Interesting. You see what the target does while the Taser is pointed at him. You'll have to figure out what he was doing a moment before that.

And prepare for the new Taser: "a mini-flying saucer like drone which could also fire Taser stun rounds on criminal suspects or rioting crowds."