This reaction surprises me (Score 4, Insightful)

I'm currently serving in the Marine Corps and the reaction I've heard here on slashdot is surprising. It seems that no one at all has chimed in saying "hey, maybe this is a good thing".

I was at the Force Protection Equipment Demonstation this year where I talked to some of the Marines at the Joint Non-Lethal Warfighting Lab about this exact product. We as Marines are looking at this tool as a lifesaver (literally). If we can roll through a place like Fallujah and use this tool to incapacitate the bad guys in front of us, then that saves their lives and puts less risk on our Marines. We want to and are doing everything we can to improve our non-lethal and less-than-lethal capabilities so that we have more options when we're faced with an enemy.

More importantly, the general vibe that I got from these responses is that you all think that we're a bunch of indiscriminent killers! Guess what...we're not! We don't want to kill if we don't have to. However, when someone is pointing a gun at us, we're not going to sit there and wait them out. For example, we have Marines coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan who are messed up psychologically because they had to shoot a kid who was shooting at them. They had no choice. They did the right thing, but now they're fucked up in the head. The only reason they're fucked up though is because they believe that it's morally wrong to shoot a child. But when that child puts themselves into a situation where they become a combatant, the only response we have right now is to shoot them.

Back to this less-than-lethal ray gun, if that Marine could've incapacitated that child instead of killing him, then the Marine can go home knowing that he completed his mission and didn't have to shoot a child, and that child can go home alive.

I'm really dissapointed in this crowd. I've been a slashdot reader for the last 8 years and I've been pretty impressed with most of the comments up until now. Have a little faith in the people serving on the front lines. We're professionals, just like you try to be at work. We care about honor, courage, commitment, etc. Frankly, if I can use this ray gun to help make my Marines safer and bring them home to my families, then as a commander, I'm all for it.