Last week rallies were held stating that stun guns and Tasers can be used as weapons of torture and insisting that they are in violation of the U.N. Convention Against Torture. In the United States there are demands to ban them. Canadian officials are also revisiting questions of their use and legality.

This comes on the heels of a surprising rise in deaths of people on whom the weapon has been used in the last week: four men in the United States and two in Canada. The committee specifically referred to the use of the Taser X26 by Portuguese police. An unnamed expert testified to the committee that use of the weapons had “proven risks of harm or death.” The U.N. committee said that "The use of TaserX26 weapons, provoking extreme pain, constituted a form of torture, and that in certain cases it could also cause death, as shown by several reliable studies and by certain cases that had happened after practical use."

The controversy over Taser usage in the United States has been on the rise, especially due to several well-publicized cases in which police used the well-known Tasers to disable suspects.

Nevertheless, Tasers are still far less lethal than conventional firearms – less lethal, in fact, than the average baseball bat when wielded by an ordinary adult. Should baseball bats be banned, too?

Think about it.