Commercial Stun Guns

[endotherm]

I was thinking about purchasing a 500k volt commercial stun gun. These things are cheap these days, i have found good 400K ^ stun guns for under $30.00 US. I can't find much information on the web about them, and i'm sure you guys know quite a bit. What is there real-life effectivenss?

-SCENARIO
a medium sized tough gangster walking down the straight, after scoring a 5,000K drug deal, the drug money is in his front right pocket, you move in, shock him on the back of the neck with a commerical 500k stun gun, and as he stumbles and falls dazed, you can easily just grab the money, and run away with nothig to worry about becuase he is going to be fucked for the next few minutes.
Is the stun-gun your weapon for this? Or is the gangster just going to turn around, rub the back of his neck saying "OUCH", while laughing as he grabs his Beretta 92 from his hip?

Also, i sort of understand that a stung gun uses high voltage, low amperage oscilatting current. This current supposedly mimics electronic nerve impulses, and replaces them with this mush, effectively confusing the hell out of your body, and leaving you helpless. Is this stuff true, or does it just shock the living shit out of a person?

[xoo1246]

I read about persons trying to rob a store using a stun gun(don't know what type). The persons trying to rob the store asked about something and when the owner turned around they used a stun gun. He felt pain in his back but wasn't knocked out as the robber was hoping.
They fled the sceen. As I said, don't know what stun gun they used.
Buy one and try it on yourself. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" />

From <a href="http://www.guns2u.com" target="_blank">http://www.guns2u.com</a>
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica">Stun Gun Info
Stun Guns use high voltage and low amperage to temporarily disable an attacker for several minutes.
The stun gun does not rely on pain for results. The energy stored in the gun is transferred into the attacker's muscles, placing a tremendous demand on the muscles. This demand instantly depletes the attacker's blood sugar by converting it to lactic acid. In short, he is unable to produce energy for his muscles, and his body is unable to function properly.

The stun gun also interrupts the tiny neurological impulses that control and direct voluntary muscle movement. When the attacker's neuromuscular system is overwhelmed and controlled by the stun gun, he loses his balance. Should the attacker touch you, the current will NOT pass to your body!

</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica">Also, check this one out:
<a href="http://www.guns2u.com/products/stun_guns/bestex_dds.htm" target="_blank">http://www.guns2u.com/products/stun_guns/bestex_dds.htm</a>
Those cassets could be manufactured by someone with some technical knowledge. And used with and inexpensive model.

<small>[ July 13, 2002, 02:20 PM: Message edited by: xoo1246 ]</small>

[PYRO500]

One thing people seem to get wrong about stun guns is that they do NOT create the voltages that they claim to be able to create. IIRC the breakdown voltage of air is 1.1KV per mm now if you had a 200KV stun gun and insulated the hell out of some leads and tried seeing how far you should be able to seperate them you should get a 91mm spark witch from what I have seen is total bs, if you could get such high voltages then you would have the ability to create very big sparks. also with the 500KV stun guns you should be able to get about 454 mm sparks through air, witch I hope you see is hopeless to acheive in such a small package. I believe the 2 stun guns I tested were somewhere around 30KV by calculating the spark length. Also I don't know quite what the manufactures are trying to sell you when they mention all this "T" wave bullshit and how it kills/disrupts/halts your nervous system, all these do is cause a bit of pain at the location of it touching you and can cause muscles nearby to contract rapidly. I had my brother try the professional 200KV stun gun that cost me about 40 bucks on me and it hurt kind of bad but in no way rendered helpless I had it held to me for around 30 seconds. I had a little stinging in the area and not much of an after effect if you knew what a stun gun felt like before hand the effect is very much diminished. I also got shocked for something like 25 seconds with the cheapo 25 buck panther 200KV stun gun witch hurt a bit less but still was kind of painful but my brother who thought he'd pull a fast one on me gabbed me and tried to shock me for a good long time got shocked through the battery compartment of the cheap stun gun presumably through the battery's ground. I also got shocked once for a second or two with an expensive stun gun (muscle man brand) that was something like 120$ and was being sold at security world now I think this one used two 9V batterys and it was the most painful shock from the three of them and it was a very rapid "hot" spark. I experimented with several kinds of batteries with the two stun guns I had and I found that with around 18V the inverter circuit can charge a whole lot faster and deliver a higer frequency spark than they looked alot more ferce than they did with just one 9V alone. I did not take apart any of the higher class stun guns but I am also assuming they have a bigger pulse capacitor in the primary circut I may have found a place where I can get these 1000V capacitors fairly cheap. I am going to see if I can make a decent shock wand from parts I can buy,m something that goes in my standards of severe pain. I believe another source of energy drain in these cheap devices are the internal spark gap that discharges the capacitor. while the spark gap adds to the simplicity of the device it causes it to loose a fair amount of energy that could be conserved otherwise. I am in the designing phase of an entirely new breed of a stun gun, the one I am trying to design will have at least 4 times the capacitance of a conventional stun gun and will have no spark gap. instead I will use a small high voltage stud SCR and diode protection network it will have atleast the same frequency of sparking as conventional stun guns but with alot more power. I will also have the major change of adding possibly a high rate of discharge NiMh battery designed for hand held radios. With the addition of all that stuff to increase the current and frequency I will look into a higher current more usable transformer, possibly a small epoxy potted igniton coil core.

[McGuyver]

I built a pretty nasty stun gun that put out about 110K volts- it was measured. It used two 2 magnetos for step-up transformers, the problem was its size otherwise it was perfect.

The nice thing about commercial stun guns is their size, they're quite compact. The reason for the spark gap is so that the attacker will get shocked though his cloths- with no spark gap you have to find some skin which you may not have time to think about. The need is higher current- which when combined with about 10K volts will definitely put Mr. Hardass on the ground :) . Your right about the 500K volts bullshit though, that would be quite hard to achieve with those little wienny things.

[PYRO500]

No, the spark gap does not make it so you can arc the thing through clothes, there are actually two spark gaps in stun guns, I was referring to the one in series with the primary of the transformer of the stun gun. When you press the button on a stun gun down a few things happen that add up to a capacitor on the main circuit board charging to somewhere around 1000V IIRC and when the electricity arcs across two strips of metal on the circuit board witch is in series with the main step up transformer witch takes the pulse and steps up the voltage and is discharged through the output. The arc on the top could have two uses but is not arcing to the person while the device is on. One of the main reasons for the arc is intimidation, the first commercially avalable stun guns with these weren't exactly toys like the ones today, they gave a very loud rapid snap that was usually fierce, but ever since people started mass producing them they have gotten really really shitty. the other possible reason for the test arc it to keep the HV from the transformer from finding a path through the epoxy insuation and effectively ruining the device. However That might not be necessary beacuse I had the thing running for quite a while with the electrodes far apart and no spark between them. it is possible earlier stun guns could be destroyed with inferrior insulation. I plan on making my custum stun gun about the size of one of those busnuess radios with everything tweaked for maximum perfomance and insulated to protect from getting shocked through the battery compartment while touching the victim. If you ever rip apart a stun gun you'll see that the internals are very tiny compared to the size of the case. the largest part is the main step up transformer witch probobly could bve reduced in size by about half. Also with all stun guns in general I don't think many of them exceen 20-30 KV with possibly the mx being 50 Kv. If I can ever get the parts to make this sucker expect schematics so you can build your own.

Edit:another thing you need to know about stun guns is that they are not really designed to knock you out. In fact I have never herd a first person report of anyone being knocked out under further searching for any proof of people being knocked out by a stun gun I found info about the Ramsey trial. I found the following quote "the Air Taser does not render people unconscious and zapped himself on camera to prove it." and the link to that page is here: <a href="http://gemart.8m.com/ramsey/stungun.html" target="_blank">http://gemart.8m.com/ramsey/stungun.html</a>

I have also found a web site backing my observations that stun guns don't put out half of what they say they do although their method of measuring voltage is flawed, they need to find the maximum distance that the device will spark at but non the less there on the right track. <a href="http://www.taser.com/Tech/Voltage2.htm" target="_blank">http://www.taser.com/Tech/Voltage2.htm</a>

<small>[ July 14, 2002, 03:13 AM: Message edited by: PYRO500 ]</small>

[Bitter]

Reminds me of that episode of jackass when they shocked some guy with a stun gun, a pepper spray and a tazer. It was crap; the guy fell over after being shocked and got up again five seconds later as if nothing had happened. That's more than enough time for the victim to retalliate, give chase or whatever.

[Anthony]

The main limiting factor even in the little 50Kv stungun I have is the battery's max discharge current. Connected to a bench PSU, even at voltages lower than 9v, it gave a far hotter spark. In fact it gave a "bunch" of 4 or 5 seperate sparks rather than just the one.

I destroyed one by putting a sheet of 1mm thick plastic btween the electrodes and watching the purple "feelers" (streamers?). I presume the insultation broke down inside as the unit just buzzed when "fired". Took it back and said "tried it out at home and it don't work!", got a straight swap for another one :)

How good are those air tazers that the cops use? All the video footage of tests I've seen, all the test subjects didn't manage to stay standing. Some literature (sales crap) claims better knock down statistics than a handgun (I presume 9mm). They've introduced them as a non-lethal weapon for cops here in the UK, the nice thing is that before being allowed to have one, the cops have to be "trained" with them, which involves each being shot with one :D

[E7]

a coulpe of years ago i had to go to one of those dumb ass "scared straight" things (a waste of time) and at the end the prison guard had about 7 of us touch fingers and two people put their fingers on the little elestrode things, (his stun gun was about the size of a video casette) and zapped us, all it did was tingle my fingers, but when i tried to pull my fingers away, they felt like they didn't want to move untill he let go of the trigger i don't know if this was the type of stun gun he used or how powerful it was, but i imagine if one person was takeing the full charge it would completely immobilize you, untill the thing was removed. but these are prisons remind you where they are only trying to subdue you untill thay can cuff you.

[PYRO500]

The problem with stun guns is that they don't totally immobilize you. Stun guns in reality cause pain witch may very in severity depending on some factors such as the power of the stun gun area contacted etc. they will cause a muscle to flex rapidly and this is very surprising and strange in feeling. I never really felt any pain in any area other than the are applied I tried it on my leg and my arm and several areas that had no muscle in them and it seems to have a diffrent more stinging effect.

As for a stun gun the size of a video casette tape, I kind of doubt that, among the biggest stun guns I have seen are these ones for cop issue in law enforcement catalogs that have 2 9V batterys and even a very high power one wouldn't need that size case to hold the electronics.

The main factor I am going to try to overcome is th max current I can draw from the battery. Surplus NiMh battery packs have fairly high max amount of current for their size and I always considered a stun gun like radios, something that needs one of those desktop chargers to charge internal or connected batteries for max performance. If I can't get a sutable NiMh battery I will probobly result to a few nicad cells that are steped up in voltage via a dc-dc converter. I think the design will be similar to the scr driven ignition coil drivers except If I don't use an ignition coil the circuit will be tweaked for the alternate frequency's.

[McGuyver]

The hottest spark (high amps) and the highest frequency will make the loudest sound, if that’s what your looking for. My homebuilt stun gun uses no internal spark gap. It's merely a switching (TRANSISTORS) 1,200 volts AC power supply which is fed into 2 magnetos. It is built so that they have opposite charges so one output jumps to the other output. A battery-powered power supply is quite easy to make.

I doubt highly they use sparking voltage just for intimidation, also having a smaller spark gap ( on the outside of a commercial stun gun) isn't as hard on the transformer. The prongs sticking out ( the ones meant to shock) will only arc when that path has less resistance (into a body). The large arc allows for the voltage to pass through clothing and to the body. How do you expect to shock someone if they have, say a leather coat on- you could go for the face :) , but they would most likely stop you before you did that. Believe me when I say my stun gun puts out 110,000 volts, I've measured it making sparks over 11 cm long. It is also quite large, 11 in. long and about 3 in. in diameter- its a cylinder like container. That’s all you need to put yours in too - to keep from getting shocked by the battery compartment.
I also never said anyone could get knocked out by a stun gun- just put on the ground from the inability to control muscles or whatever happens. I can give you the schematic for the power supply if you want it. You can use ignition coils or magnetos, I just used magnetos because they are smaller and that’s what I was looking for. Ignition coils are better to use though because they are usually filled with oil which makes them less susceptible to high voltage breakdown.

[Anthony]

I've always wonder what would happen if you ran a wire from one electrode of a comercial stungun to the base of someone's spine and another to the base of their skull. Or sticking your eyeball between the electrodes... Feeling brave pyro? :)

The shocking through the battery compartment is an odd thing. I found that if you touch one electrode to a grounded object (an earthed electrical appliance in this case), the stungun would operate as normal, sparking accross it's gap, or to the appliance casing if close enough, but I'd always get a shock through the battery compartment, regardless of whether I was earthed too, or not.

[PYRO500]

I'm not gonna take my stun gun and zap my eyeball with it, the probable result of something like that is having a corneal tear or a spot on your cornea that develops a scab or welt irritating the fuck outta your eye. As for taking a wire from the base of the spine and the top of the neck I tried that and I felt a few of my back and neck muscles contract, not really painful. I did try once shocking a pulsed flyback transformer throuhg my temples it caused me to see a a white flash in my vision. it was strange kind of like seeing stars when yoiu get hit in the head albeit only for an instand during the relitively low power pulse from the transformer. (the pulse was only from the saturated magnetic core witch was energised by a 9V battery and disconnected.

[Whitey]

Oddly enough after reading this thread, someone I work with mentioned getting a stun gun for his girlfriend. He tested it on himself and it "hurt like a bitch but not that bad".

I think the effectiveness of a stun gun rests partially on surprise. Someone who expects to be shocked will be less affected than someone who is shocked totally out of the blue. This is similiar to mace, people who are maced during a test remain standing and are still able to fight (some what), probably due to the fact that they would naturally be squinting and would try to avoid breathing in the gas. Others I have talked to who have been maced in a real world situation found it totally disabling because they did not expect to be sprayed.

[PYRO500]

McGuyver, what exactly are yow talking about when you mention magnetoes? The only magnetos I have herd of are generators usally for high voltage that are often found in small engines for ignition? did you remove the magneto coils and use the inductance in them to make HV ? How do you pulse the power to the coils? I am assuming you pulse them with a capacitor right? I know that pulsing thw transformer wthout anything for it to arc through is possibly going to create a conductive path in the epoxy but after much abuse (not a severe anough word) my el cheapo stun gun transformer is still alive. I think the original designers intent of the spark electrodes was for intimidation, the engineering team must have taken protecting the transformer and intimidation into account or else the spark gap would probobly be on the inside. If you don't think a stun gun has an intimidating sound, go to a security world store or whatever and ask them to demonstrate an intimidator dual 9V battery stun gun, they are almost always fitted with fresh batteries for demonstration and the dual 9V battery ones are often ferce.

[nbk2000]

Since you're building them yourselves, there's no reason not to build in the option of lethality.

Punk fucks with you, stun him. He pulls out a knife or gets 4 buddies...time to die! All at the flick of a switch.

An idea I got from watching a show about Less-Lethals was a stunner unit that, instead of launching (complicated), would instead be stuck on the target using a baton. The baton would have several such stunner units in the end, so you could stick several people. The stunners remain attached to the victim with rat-trap type glue, or barbs.

You don't have to remain in close proximity to the target to keep them stunned, and you're not restricted to dealing with one target at a time as you would be with conventional stunners.

[PYRO500]

That just gave me an idea, have a club like device with some little sticky firecrackers with metal barbs on them, they are alot of them and when they are stuck to your prey they explode a little while afer being seperated from the club :) .

[nbk2000]

I like that idea! A barbed string of firecrackers, each larger than the last, stuck on a punk and exploding about every 1/2 second for at least 15 seconds. By the time the last one goes off, it's like an M-80.

This would draw attention, naturally, but would keep the punk occupied with other things while you run away. In the end, he's dazed but unharmed. Unless, in a panic, he runs onto an expressway or off a bridge. :D

[PYRO500]

What about a more harmful version of that kind of device? what about a stick covered in m-80 sized firecrackers that are individual, they have straightened out fishhooks for attachment barbs and take out little chunks of flesh when they explode! of course if you had your string of firecrackers out of flash they might do the same thing.
also what is keeping you from making some kind of rocket propelled launcher that launches a few tiny firecrackers with barbs. I am tinking something like flash tipped exploding bottle rockets with straightened out fishhooks in the end (they really can get a hold on skin. these would be electronicly wired in a series of small tubes to give them more speed and would only be used short range due to the bottle rocket's tendency top spin without a stick.

[endotherm]

A bunch of firecrackers coated in sticky trap glue kind of like <a href="http://www.coburnco.com/mrsticky/NewFiles/mouseandrat.html" target="_blank">THIS STUFF</a> , not necessarily that brand but that kind of trap. The glue on those fuckers is very sticky, it is sticky like goo so if you try to pull it off it will just get stuck on your hand, and if you try to shake it off it won't fall off. Vegetable oil is apparently the "solvent", it isn't a solvent, it just makes it unsticky.

[PYRO500]

as much as glue would be effective here you also have to consider concealment and storage, that's why I think methal barbs would be most effective, not only do they not make a mess but they wount stick to something like a table or an inanimate object but they will stick easily to clothes or skin.

[W_S]

Well, this isn't a commercial stun gun, but i couldn't think of anywhere else to put it. I was at a friends house earlier today and saw a lighter on a shelf. I picked it up and tried to light it it shocked me, this was not a malfunction, but it was a trick lighter. it wasn't very painful, but it scared the hell out oe me and as an almost reflex, i threw the lighter accross the room. when someone else tried it, and they were expecting to get shocked they still threy it down almost automaticly. when he threw it it stoped working. I took it apart and all it was was a AAA battery, and a coil of wire. i do not know anything about electronics so i don't know what this was called, but it looked like a coil of copper wire. when you touched the buttom of the lighter and the base in the same hand it would shock you slightly.

Now, i was just thinking what if you could use a larger power source, like one of those 3v lithium batterys and a capacitor(sp) from a disposible camera, you might be able to rig a lighter with the contacts comeing out the bottom of the lighter. it wouldn't be very powerful at all, i know, but it would be very discreet and still have some power to it.

I'll try and take some pictures of the inside on the lighter and post them to the FTP.

[shrek]

If you take apart the clicky button type butane lighter (About 6 inches long), and take out the crystal that creates the electricity, you can just press the wires up against someone and click it... hurts bad on the spine, etc.

Also I made a stun gun one time. (Well a kill gun :) ) It was a PG&E pole capacitor, 15Kv or so, and I had it charge off of a neon sign transformer. The unit was in a backpack, and I had a PVC pipe with the wires coming out and attaching to rods. So all I do is press the rods against something... BANG! I was going to get a switch, but could not find anything to take the current, that was cheap. It was cool.

shrek

[PYRO500]

A piezoelectric lighter unit? please, that wouldn't kill an ant a fly or any small insect you could find (believe me I've tried) and a PG&e capacitor? you give no information about. as for charging the capacitor with a NST that is wasteful at it is discharging at every AC cycle and unless it arcs over at a specific voltage should at least have a HV diode to rectify the ac.

[shrek]

The piezoelectric lighter unit, I thought it stung when I did it on my spine... and a PG&E capacitor, I gave no info about it because I do not have the info off hand. I'll go check it, it is stored at my grandparents house, and come back with the info... if you really want it. And the output was rectified, the unit was constructed back in the day, when my dad was a kid. The charger and cap were his old toys.

shrek

[Ron McDonald]

A stun gun will only produced the knock down effects if the contacts are kept very close to the attack for close to three seconds. On another interesting note, if they have a pacemaker they will die almost instantly. There are people of all ages out there with pacemakers, and if you drop one of these people you will be charged will no less than Manslaughter One. Have fun and don't kill anyone on accident