Can A Stun Gun Knock You Out?

Have you found yourself asking, can a stun gun knock you out? Or are you thinking about getting a stun gun for your own personal defense and want to know exactly how it will work in a combative situation?

Whichever question or questions brought you here – I have the answer for you! It’s important to understand the power of a stun gun especially if you’re considering using one. I am on a mission to ensure every individual, like you, has access to proper and true information that bypasses any hype or ill-informed controversy that tends to arise in the world of stun guns.

So, can a stun gun knock you out? A stun gun does not have the capability to knock someone out into an unconscious status. The stun gun is designed to cause a series of effects based on how long the stun gun is held to the attacker. Applying the stun gun for 1 second or less will cause minor muscle contractions and potentially cause the assailant to jump back. 1-2 seconds will cause muscle spasms and the assailant feeling dazed. Anything over 3 seconds is intended to cause the assailant to lose their balance and muscle control as well as become mentally confused and disorientated. All of these effects are temporary.

What Causes A Person To Be ‘Knocked Out’?

Knocked out is defined as someone who loses conscious from direct trauma to the head.

When the skull is hit with a physical object with enough force it will cause the brain to bounce around dramatically inside of the head. This can cause the brain stem to twist and pull as well as violently agitating the 2 hemispheres of the brain. When these 2 hemispheres are turned off simultaneously or if the brain stem is shut down from the breakage of brain circuits then the person loses consciousness.

This video will explain in more detail for you what happens when a person gets knocked out:

Ok, So Can A Stun Gun Cause Someone To Lose Consciousness?

The answer here is still no. The only way that an electrical current will cause a loss of consciousness is if the current is strong enough to cause cardiac arrest.

An electrical current needs to be at a strength of at least 50 milliamps and usually 100 or above in healthy adults to begin hitting the thresholds that would initiate cardiac arrest in a human. Your stun gun that you might be getting would only be at 4 milliamps or lower.

This is to say, in a healthy adult, there would be no way for a stun gun to cause the loss of consciousness from a scientific standpoint.

What A Stun Gun Does To Your Brain

So you might be wondering if it can’t cause a person to lose consciousness, then what does a stun gun do? Well, first we need to understand how the brain works with the muscles.

The brain uses electricity to communicate to the central nervous system of the body which allows it to control and operate the muscles effectively. A stun gun issues an electrical current that acts like a bunch of noise to the brain and cuts off the communication from the brain to the muscles.

To give you a scenario you can think about if you were having a conversation with someone. If a third person came up to the both of you and began yelling and screaming randomly it would make it difficult to continue your conversation with the person you are speaking with. The third person in this scenario represents the stun gun.

The Aftereffects of a Stun Gun

Even though a stun gun by itself cannot knock someone out, it is still important to understand the effects a stun gun has on a person. This is because when you hold the stun gun to a person for 3-5 seconds it can cause a person to lose their balance and fall over.

Understanding this leads you to believe that a person may fall over and knock their head on a hard object or even something like the pavement below them. This could definitely cause the brain to bounce around violently which could lead to unconsciousness or being “knocked out”.

Now, the aftereffects of a stun gun itself are not permanent but there are obviously indirect repercussions to consider from this perspective. However, if an assailant is attacking you or attempting to steal from you, you would probably be within the realms of self-defense regardless of what happened after the stun gun did its job.

Nano-Second Electrical Pulse Stun Gun

With everything being said about current stun guns being unable to knock you out, there is a new design in the works that has been requested by the Pentagon to produce a disabling effect. The nanosecond electrical pulse is the term that revolves around this concept. It means that it would be delivering very short and high-intensity electric pulses into the subject that can essentially stun the person for a period of time.

This is in the works by research and development of the Pentagon according to the Pentagon’s PDF. It states that extensive biochemical research needs to be done to ensure that the device remains non-lethal. It would be safe to say that this device will be reserved primarily for the U.S Department of Defense and not for civilians or even police officers. 

To Close It Out

Well, if you were wondering, can a stun gun can knock you out before this, now you know it can’t! At least, not on its own. If a person falls over and smacks their head after being stunned, that’s obviously a different story. You now understand what it means to be knocked out and even what’s happening to your brain when you get hit with blunt trauma. 

You also should understand the effects a stun gun has on a person and even what the future of the stun gun has in store with the nano-second electrical pulse stun gun. That’s it for now!