The Navy's new 'pain-gun': no pain, no gain!

While most, if not all of the civilized world has been moving as fast and far away from lethal artillery as possible to nonlethal weaponry, the US and A’s armed forces are spearheading the development of nonlethal weapons that feel like the very worst in lethal arms—and they’ve granted a research contract to a University, no less. The U of Florida in Gainesville won the Navy defense contract titled “Sensory consequences of electromagnetic pulses emitted by laser induced plasmas”, which is basically a fancy way of saying they want to use otherwise noble pain research to enable long distance laser beams and exploding plasma bursts to engage pain neurons without physical harm. (We’re still not sure how this is different from the other pain-gun.) Uh, wasn’t the point of nonlethal weaponry for one party to merely to stop another party from doing something undesireable? Maybe so, but in America we don’t just try and stop people from doing anything—no, we make sure to teach ‘em a lesson in pain while we’re at it.