Can ataserkill you

Necessity may or may not be the mother of invention, but sometimes the story of an idea's birth is weirder than anything you could make up. In today's example, a former rocket scientist (born on this day in 1920) invented the taser in his garage because of something he read in the news, and it's actually named after a character from a 1911 young adult science fiction novel.

The Private Security Certificate is designed to provide you with an entry-level education and hands-on training to enhance employability in the field of private security. Private security officers protect the safety and security of businesses, assets, employees, and individuals. Private security job opportunities have expanded substantially in size, scope and quality since 9-11. Statistics on the national level indicate that there are more than twice as many private security jobs available than public law enforcement jobs.

Taserfor women

No other college in the State of Michigan offers a one year certificate in Private Security that includes a hands-on academy that provides certification in areas such as:

Taserprice

An attendee fires Taser International Inc.'s X3 stun gun during the 2010 International Consumer... [+] Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S., on Friday, Jan. 8, 2010. 20,000 new technologies will debut at CES, which runs through Jan. 11 and is expected to see at least 113,000 attendees and 2,500 exhibitors, the Consumer Electronics Association said. Photographer: Ronda Churchill/Bloomberg

Stun gun vsTaser

The Private Security certificate program at Bay College provides you with the basic academic course work, hands-on training, and skill development needed to secure a career in private security. Upon completion of the certificate program, you will have attained hands-on training in the following tactics: weaponry (including firearms), controlled force, chemical spray, and more. You will also acquire an understanding of the U.S. criminal justice system; the processing of juvenile and adult offenders; the trial process; emergency preparation and crisis management; and much more.

After that wildly improbable beginning, tasers are now ubiquitous tools in the inventories of law enforcement agencies, militaries, and private citizens worldwide. Cover envisioned a non-lethal way for police to restrain a suspect, but there's still debate about the safety of tasers and whether they impact police officers' decisions for better or for worse. They're clearly less lethal than firearms, but not perfectly safe; a taser shock can kill someone if they're on certain drugs (legal or otherwise), under cardiac stress from heavy exertion, or suffering from certain heart conditions. Several law enforcement agencies point to fewer injuries to both officers and suspects since their adoption of tasers, but other studies contest those results. Debate over their impact continues, but Thomas A. Swift's Electric Rifles probably aren't going anywhere.

Bay College is the regional college of choice where people thrive, workforces excel, communities connect and lives transform.

TASERself defense

And that's where the story gets really bizarre. Tom Swift, genius teenage inventor, was the star of a series of science fiction novels for young adults, first published in 1910. The series titles offer an interesting glimpse of 1910's concept of futuristic sci-fi gadgets: Swift's adventures hinge on far-fetched inventions like a portable movie camera, a telephone that can send photographs, and a technique for making synthetic diamonds. Of course, to be perfectly fair to the 1910s, there's also a flying submarine and a rifle that fires blasts of energy through walls. That particular invention is the centerpiece of the 1911 Tom Swift And His Electric Rifle, one of Cover's childhood favorites. Although the TASER didn't work much like Swift's physics-defying weapon, it was close enough for government work (or at least for a former government contractor's personal project).

Tasers exist because one day in the late 1960s, Jack Cover -- a former military test pilot with a doctorate in nuclear physics who worked with NASA as a contractor on the Apollo missions -- read a newspaper article about a man who blundered into an electrified fence. The shocking experience left the man unable to move for a few minutes, but otherwise unharmed, which intrigued Cover. He had also noticed a spate of news reports of aircraft hijackings, and the offbeat news story about the man in the fence gave him an even more offbeat idea: an electric stun gun that would let law enforcement stun a suspect without doing any permanent damage (in theory). He set to work in his garage workshop and emerged in 1976 with a dart gun, more or less. It could fire the darts only a short distance, because electrical wires tethered them to the gun -- and carried the electrical current that gave the weapon its name: Thomas A. Swift Electric Rifle, or TASER.

Cover initially dubbed his invention simply Thomas Swift Electric Rifle, but decided to give young Tom a middle initial once he started selling the stun guns because, as he told the Washington Post in 1976, "We got tired of answering the phone T.S.E.R." Since then, of course, English speakers have collectively decided that "TASER" sounds like a noun that should mean "something that tases," so if you zap someone with a Thomas A. Swift Electric Rifle, you've tased them.

Certification can give you an edge when competing for jobs in private or corporate security, and potentially other areas of criminal justice. As a security officer, you may also provide armed or unarmed patrol and guard services, traffic regulation, and fire and theft prevention and detection. You may also attain specialized knowledge necessary to seek employment in law enforcement; the criminal court system, corrections; and private and corporate security. Fundamentals for preventing and investigating various types of crime - including white-collar crime, information security and fraud will also be developed.