Device Designed to Deliver 45,000-Volt Jolt to Attacker : Stun Gun Pleases Buyers, Shocks Critics

By J. MICHAEL KENNEDY

March 31, 1985 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

AUSTIN, Tex. — Cary Young jabbed the prongs of the plastic weapon against the flesh of his large arm, punched a button and sent 45,000 volts of electricity coursing through his body.

Because he had zapped himself for only a fraction of a second, the only visible ill-effect was two spots that looked like a snake bite where the prongs had touched the skin. A few more seconds of voltage and Young might have crumpled to the floor, but, as it was, he stood up at his secretary’s bidding and went to answer a telephone call from the FBI.

Young was demonstrating his company’s hottest and most controversial product, the Nova XR 5000 Stun Gun, the latest entry into the ever-expanding self-protection market. Only slightly larger than an electric razor and, at $79.95, less expensive than a cheap hand gun, it is being billed as the answer for persons who want protection but do not want to own a gun. The manufacturer, Nova Technologies of Austin, says the stun gun cannot kill but can immobilize a mugger for up to 1 1/2 minutes.

More often than not, the company says, it would be used to momentarily shock an attacker, making him feel as if he had just put his finger into a lamp socket, encouraging him to make a fast getaway. It takes a three- to five-second jolt to actually immobilize someone.

In Great Demand

The hand-held Nova, a distant relative of the wire and antenna Taser guns used by many police departments to stun at short range, has been on the market for 19 months, and the demand is so great that many gun stores cannot keep them in stock. According to Nova, 150,000 have been distributed, and 250 law enforcement agencies are either using or testing them.

One gun shop, Rebel Guns in the Houston suburb of Humble, has sold 300 stun guns in the last five months. “Women are buying them because a lot of them are leery of guns,” sales manager Bill Wagner said. “They don’t know how to use guns and, besides, they don’t want to kill anybody.”

Ken Wilcox, a Sugarland, Tex., gunsmith who saw his first stun gun at a weapons collection show, described his reaction: “There were a bunch of people crowded around this one guy. He had this little plastic thing with two prongs a couple of inches apart. There was a blue arc jumping between them. It was very powerful. I could feel it in my nose and mouth. It was almost like I could smell the power.”

That power is a source of some controversy. Nova calls the stun gun the ultimate weapon for the average citizen, but others believe that its use should be restricted to law enforcement officials.

Fears of Misuse

Chief Michael Manick of the Union City, Calif., police department said his force was the first in the state to employ stun guns. He calls them highly effective but fears their misuse.

“I am not for public ownership of the stun gun,” he said. “We need less weapons on the street. The Nova will take down a police officer too. It’s extremely effective.”

Sgt. Ron Hearn of the Douglas County, Neb., Sheriff’s Department disagrees. “I would rather see John Doe with this under his car seat than a .357 magnum,” he said.

Hearn’s department is testing the stun gun for police work. It commissioned a study of the weapon’s potential medical hazards, which found no major health hazards.

Few Incidents of Abuse

Nova insists that the stun gun would hardly be the weapon of choice for a mugger or a rapist because the first reaction from a voltage zap would be to jump and run. The company says that there have been only five to 10 incidents of abuse since the gun went on sale l9 months ago.

At the National Criminal Justice Reference Service, a clearinghouse of federal justice related-documents in Rockville, Md., spokesman Bart Stringham said there are no federal reports on the use of the stun gun. “There just hasn’t been any federal funding to test this kind of thing,” he said. Nevertheless, incidents involving the stun gun have been gaining attention on both coasts.

Last Monday, federal marshals in Brooklyn, N.Y., used stun guns to immobilize three prisoners in a courtroom melee. The marshals, who had been trained by Nova personnel, called the incident justified use of force. But Christopher Stanley, lawyer for one of the prisoners being arraigned on charges of bombing of corporations in the New York City area, called the use of the stun guns “outrageous.”

Found in Baggage

In California, Todd Kevin Wallace was arrested Feb. 9 as he was deplaning at the Ontario Airport and charged with stealing airline tickets. When his baggage was searched, a stun gun was found, and he now also faces a charge of possession of a concealed and dangerous weapon on an aircraft. A conviction on that charge could put the stun gun in the dangerous weapon category, which might, in turn, lead to restrictions on its sale.

That was the reason for the phone call that Young received just after giving himself a jolt to demonstrate the Nova XR 5000. The FBI was calling with the particulars of the case.

“I guess I’ll have to go and testify,” said Young, who is an administrative vice president of Nova, a former deputy sheriff and one of the persons whose job is to convince state lawmakers that the stun gun should remain available to the public.

So far, four states--Michigan, New York, Wisconsin and Hawaii--have outlawed public ownership of stun guns, and Illinois, Florida and Georgia have restricted their use.

Lawmaker Reconsidered

In Indiana, state Sen. Frank Mervan first said he was going to introduce legislation to ban the guns, then reconsidered.

“We got to the realization that this is used by many women as a form of non-lethal protection,” he said. “The only way someone will get hurt is if he falls down and hits his head.”

Another convert is California Assemblyman Steve Clute of Riverside County, who had authored a bill that would severely restrict the sale of stun guns. He said he plans to write a less stringent amendment to that bill to require registration of the stun gun and a course in how to use it.

“I don’t think it should be regulated as much as hand guns,” he said. “I think it could be a useful and important item for people who are attacked.”

Nine-Volt Battery

The stun gun is powered by a nine-volt nickel cadmium battery--the same small rectangular battery used in some children’s toys. After the current passes through a series of diodes, resistors, capacitors and transformers, it comes out as 45,000 volts. But the strength of the electrical current--the amperage--is not enough to kill.

Dr. Theodore Bernstein, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, did a study for Nova in which he concluded that the stun gun was less dangerous than, say, an electric fence or a cattle prod.

Doug Smith, another Nova vice president, said the electrical shock is incapable of reaching the heart and that no other vital organs are affected. He said the brain is fooled into thinking something terribly wrong is going on throughout the body, even though the shock is localized.

The study done for Nebraska’s Douglas County Sheriff’s Department came to similar conclusions but suggested that more studies should be made and warned that the eyes might be damaged if voltage was applied there.

Inspired by Report

William Votaw, Nova’s executive vice president, said that Nova President Dan Dowell began developing the stun gun after reading part of a 1969 report by the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence calling for development of a weapon that could serve “defensive needs without risk to human life.”

Votaw said Dowell worked on the gun in his garage and perfected it two years ago. Since then, the company has grown so quickly that it will have to move into more spacious offices next month.

But controversy over the stun gun is sure to continue.

“It’s Mace all over again,” said B. J. Willoughby, a policeman with the Houston SWAT team. “People buy them because they think it’s another deterrent to crime. But if you ask me, they’re a bad idea. Half the time, they don’t work and, like Mace, they can be turned against you.”

But another opinion comes from Houston detective Kevin McDonnell.

“Look, when I zap you, your first reaction is to jump, right? And, if you’re a mugger, that’s all I need. I just want to get away.”