Forget Tupperware Parties…Have A Taser Party!
Jan 05, 2008 in Humor, News, Police Brutality, Taser
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“The worst nightmare for me is, while I’m sleeping, someone coming in my home,” Shafman says, drawing a few solemn nods from the gathered women. Shafman, 34, of Phoenix, says she knows how they feel. She says she used to stash knives under her pillow for protection.
Welcome, she says, to the Taser party.
On the coffee table, Shafman spreads out Taser’s C2 “personal protector” weapons that the company is marketing to the public. It doesn’t take long before the women are lined up in the hallway, whooping as they take turns blasting at a metallic target.
“C’mon!” she says. “Give it a shot.”
Shafman isn’t an employee for Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Taser International. She’s an independent entrepreneur who’s been selling Tasers the way her mother’s generation sold plastic food storage containers.
As a single woman who lives alone, Shafman says she’s the perfect pitchwoman for Taser.
The company agrees. Taser officials like Shafman’s homespun sales tactics so much that they plan to build a living room set at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and have Shafman hold a Taser party for buyers and dealers.
Taser doesn’t expect its dealers to start imitating Shafman. But spokesman Steve Tuttle says company officials think people can learn from her approach.
“When I talk about Taser, I come across as a salesman,” Tuttle says. “When you see her, it comes across as very real.”
Shafman tried moonlighting as a door-to-door Taser saleswoman. But years of negative press about Taser made it tough.
So the Taser party was born.
Shafman says she’s sold about 30 guns per month at $349.99 since her first Taser party on Oct. 15. She gets a discounted dealer rate for the units and keeps the difference.
Taser launched the C2 in August. Though it packs the same electric punch, the C2 is smaller than the bulky personal stun guns Taser developed years ago, and its sleek exterior makes it look more like an electric razor than a weapon. They’re legal in every state but New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Michigan, Wisconsin, Hawaii, and Washington, D.C.
Shafman says many of her women customers love that the C2 is small enough to fit in their purses, and that it comes in a variety of colors. When it comes to choosing weapons, she says, a lot of women want them in pink.
“It’s a girl power kind of thing,” Shafman says. “You’re kind of making a statement: I know I’m the most sought after victim in regards to sexual assault, sexual abuse. So please stay away from me. If in the event you do come after me, I’m going to use my pink Taser to put you on the ground.”
Amnesty International, which has criticized Taser’s assertion that its weapons are nonlethal, frowns on the C2 and any attempt to spread the use of stun guns. The organization says the weapons are frequently used in excess by trained police and are likely to be abused by the public as well.
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