Stun Guns - Principle that works behind a stun gun

Stun Gun is a weapon that incapacitates a person without causing any long-term damage. An ordinary citizen can carry a Stun Gun along to protect oneself against personal attacks.

Concept of Stun Guns was put forward years back by a science fiction "Star Trek". Stun Gun is a weapon that gives an idea of how our futuristic weaponry will be. Today millions of people including military personnel to a normal citizen carry stun guns as a weapon of self-protection. Stun Guns are proving to be one important weapon in saving lives in real time situations.

Basically, human body has electric energy as one of the most essential elements. Our brain and nervous system uses electric signal to communicate and transfer message to various parts of the body. If you want to hold a ball in your hands, your brain sends electrical signals to the muscles in your arm via nerve cell; the muscle cell in hand then reacts according to the signal received. Almost all activities performed by our body include exchange of electric signal between various part of body and brain.

In order to keep our body functioning properly, we need this communication be carried out without any interruption. If any unwanted noise signal is added to the original signals that the nerve system and brain are using for communication, then confusion is created and the functioning of the whole body gets affected. Stun Gun works exactly on the same principle. If we pass an electric signal (not having much intensity that can damage a person's nervous system permanently) in someone's body, this will interrupt the communication system of the body; confusion will be created in his/her communication system as the charge combines with the electrical signals from the person's brain. When a noise gets added to the original signal in the attacker's body, it becomes almost impossible to decode the signal by the nerve system at the receiving end and do what exactly the attacker wanted to, this causes a nerve system failure and the attacker gets paralyzed for some time period.

Electricity can be harmful for human body and can kill someone, but only when a very high intensity charge is passed through the body for an extended period of time. When we use a Stun Gun against an attacker, it passes an electric charge in the attacker's body with fairly high voltage which passes through the clothes and skin, but as the Stun Gun uses a charge that is not intense enough (around 3 milliamps) to harm the nervous system of the attacker permanently, but it does add confusing information to the attacker's nervous system and it becomes unbalanced as the nervous system cannot decode the information properly. Ultimately the attacker gets paralyzed, temporarily.

Today there are different types of Stun Guns available in market, generated with various techniques incorporated to make them effective. The stun gun's effectiveness varies depending on the size of attacker, time period you keep the stun gun in contact with the body of the attacker, type and strength of the stun gun and what intensity charge that can input in the attacker's body? Etc.

Stun Guns designed earlier have a fairly simple design. They are about the size of a flashlight, and they work on ordinary 9-volt batteries. The electricity to the circuit containing various components is provided by the batteries, which convert this electric current into a high voltage and low intensity charge used to paralyze attacker for a short period. The circuitry inside the Stun Guns includes multiple transformers, components that boost the voltage in the circuit, typically to between 20,000 and 150,000 volts, and reduce the amperage. It also includes an oscillator, a component that fluctuates current to produce a specific pulse pattern of electricity. This current charges a capacitor. The capacitor builds up a charge, and releases it to the electrodes, which are at the end and are brought in contact with the body of attacker. As Stun Gun makes a contact with the body of the attacker, the high voltage charge, which is inside the circuitry, gets shifted to the body of attacker as the electric circuit gets completed. And the charge is passed to the attacker’s body.