Stun Guns and the Voltage Myth

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If you've ever shopped around for stun guns, you've seen plenty of extremely high voltage claims - possibly up to 100 million volts. These astronomical figures sound impressive - but the truth is, when it comes to stun guns, claims like these are not only wildly misleading, but also physically impossible. In fact, 30,000 is the maximum voltage that could jump across stun gun contacts spaced one centimeter apart. Any larger voltage claim violates the laws of physics.

So, how can companies get away with these claims?

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There are no official, publicly available design or technical standards in the stun gun industry, nor is there any government regulation. Unfortunately, there are some companies that take advantage of the lack of accountability.

So, it’s up to you to take charge of your safety and get the truth about the products you entrust with your life. Keep reading to learn...

More about the voltage myth
What really makes a stun gun effective
How to choose the right stun gun
And how to use your product to maximize your safety

The Popular - and Dangerous - Stun Gun Myth

MYTH: Voltage indicates stun gun strength.

FACT: What indicates strength is microcoulombs, which measure charge (current x time).

"Delivered charge" is the best indicator of the potential electrostimulation. It is measured in coulombs [or microcoulombs: µC].

— Study of Deaths Following Electro Muscular Disruption (p. 54), National Institute of Justice

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Let's think of electricity as a water pipe to understand the relationship between voltage, current and charge.

TERM	DEFINITION	ANALOGY
Current	A flow of electricity.¹ Measured in amps (A).	Water in the pipe
Voltage	The force of an electrical current.² Measured in volts (V).	Water pressure
Charge	An amount of electricity.³ Measured in coulombs (Q) or microcoulombs (uC). 1Q = 1A x 1 sec	Quantity of water that has flowed through the pipe

¹ Merriam-Webster
² Merriam-Webster
³ Merriam-Webster

The water pipe analogy is widely used in the industry, including by the National Institute of Justice.

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water pressure/voltage

Think about a water pipe in your home. You can set the water pressure (voltage) to the highest setting possible, but this doesn’t do anything for you if there’s no water in the pipe (current), which carries the quantity of water (charge).

Even if you set the water pressure (voltage) to high, you can't get wet if you don't have any water (current). The greater the quantity of that water (charge), the wetter you get (more pain you feel).

Simply put, voltage may ‘open the door’ for charge to pass through, but it doesn’t cause any pain on its own. If it’s not coupled with significant charge, it won’t hurt.

“Current alone can hurt you whereas voltage alone cannot,” sums up the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Remember that there’s no current without charge. Think of our analogy. The charge is analogous to the amount of water; you can have a still body of water. However, you can't have a current if there's nothing for it to carry. The amount of charge, or pain felt, is analogous to how wet you get. With a greater current, you can carry more charge in a given period of time.

Having a great deal of voltage simply means that you have the potential to make charge move. Having just the potential to do this will not hurt you in the slightest unless you actually have some charges there to move. If all you’re looking at is current, then you’re talking about having a great deal of charge moving across you. Having all that charge moving across your body will hurt you a great deal.

— Tamara, The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Having high voltage does not mean that you have high current. You can have all the ‘motivation’ in the world for charges to move, but if there’s no charge there, you won’t get any current. So you can have a lot of potential to make charges move (voltage) without actually having any charges moving (current). This means you can have high voltage without getting hurt at all.

A great example of this is static electricity. By pulling a sweater off over your head on a cold winter day you often feel sparks crackling… this requires thousands of volts, but does not really hurt.

— Tamara, The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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Regardless, companies still make false voltage claims to sell stun guns.

The pervasiveness of the voltage myth allows companies to make unfounded and astronomical claims. You can't afford to fall victim to their tricks. Keep reading!

The electronic stun device market is permeated with claims of extremely high voltages. Unfortunately, most of these claims have little basis in reality. As you can see in the table below from an independent published source, the advertised voltage of most stun devices is greatly exaggerated.

— Prison Legal News, Human Rights Defense Center

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Take, for instance, the numbers Prison Legal News refers to in their report.

MODEL²	ADVERTISED VOLTAGE	ACTUAL PEAK VOLTAGE
AIR TASER^TM	50,000 V	50,000 V
O-mega SS	120,000 V	16,400 V
Nova Spirit	20,000 V	24,900 V
STN-160	160,000 V	28,700 V
SK Thunder Power	120,000 V	25,000 V
SK Thunder 945SP	65,000 V	23,000 V
SK Sigma-7 Model C	45,000 V	20,700 V
Super Thunder	75,000 V	19,600 V
Z-Force-Ultra	150,000 V	25,200 V
Z-Force III	100,000 V	29,700 V
Z-Force I	80,000 V	20,400 V
STG-1	50-100,000 V	11,000 V

Peak voltage describes the highest/greatest voltage in a series of pulses.

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Furthermore, marketing claims refer to open circuit voltage - which is misleading.

We need to take the electrical resistance of human flesh into account.

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Even when stun gun packaging doesn’t lie about voltage, it’s still misleading. This is because it refers to the open circuit voltage, which doesn’t take resistance into account.

Take, for example, the TASER^® voltages noted above.

The [device]’s voltage is 50 kilovolts only until the arc appears or until the barbs make contact with conductive flesh, which in worst conditions offers around 400 ohms of resistance. The target’s body is never exposed to the 50 kV. The [device] delivers a peak voltage of 1200 V to the body.

— Mike W. Kroll , Crafting the Perfect Shock

So, voltage advertised should take resistance into account. In our testing below, we tested all stun guns against 600 ohms of resistance.

This figure is a good estimate of typical resistance, although “there are a lot of factors involved and not every person has the same electrical resistance,” as the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign explains. “For instance, men tend to have lower resistance than women. [...] a rough value for the internal resistance of the human body is 300-1,000 ohms.”

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Mike W. Kroll, who sits on the board of TASER^® International, Inc., also notes that human flesh “in worst conditions offers around 400 ohms of resistance.”

So, if a stun gun is effective (or, emits significant charge) against 600 ohms of resistance, that’s a good indicator it would induce pain on a human.

How strong does a stun gun need to be to cause pain?

For the purposes of our testing, we can consider anything over 0.5 µC likely to cause pain.

"1 µC is 'reasonable for the hand of a male subject using small electrodes,'" explained Rassettica. This threshold is consistent with results published in the Testimony of J. Patrick Reilly of John Hopkins Institute of Applied Physics to Brainwood Commission.

The National Institute of Justice has also confirmed that "subjects reported pain on average at 0.5 microcoulombs, and intolerable pain at 1.0 microcoulombs."

So, how strong are the stun guns on the market today?

We got the facts with Rassettica.

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SABRE takes safety and product development extremely seriously, so we teamed up with Rassettica Testing Limited, North America’s leading independent conducted energy weapon (CEW) testing company.

Who is Rassettica Testing Limited?

A leading group of engineers studying biomedical effects of electricity on the human body
Performance testing TASER^®for many police forces
Forensic examinations of stun guns
Prototype evaluation of new weapons

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Rassettica helped us uncover an unfortunate truth about the stun gun industry: Consumers have been misled, and it’s all too easy for companies to take advantage of this. The most important takeaways from our testing is that voltage 1) does not indicate stun gun strength, and 2) is commonly overstated, providing a false sense of security while propping up a dangerous myth.

Keep reading to find out what else we learned!

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Stun gun strength testing purpose and procedures

The Rassettica test procedure in this section describes the methods, equipment and personnel used to develop a relative characterization of the electrical charge characteristics of stun guns, with particular emphasis on charge (µC) delivered by the stun gun.

During the signal acquisition, the stun gun is fired for up to 7 seconds into a resistive load (600 ohms) which approximates the resistance of a major body muscle.
The stun gun is usually energized by two switches.
The first switch, usually a slider switch, arms the circuitry and the second switch, usually a push button switch just above the arming switch, triggers the electrical discharge.
The stun gun is held on the non-conductive pad so that the contacts touch the metal contacts which transmit the electricity to the resistive load.
The measuring instrument (oscilloscope) is triggered to open a 7-second window of signal acquisition.
The push button trigger is depressed so that approximately 5 seconds of discharge are captured by the measuring instrument.
It will be noted that good contact with the contacts on the contact pad will not produce any or very little arcing sound. An absence of audible sound and no visible arc means that all the discharged energy is flowing to the resistive load for measurement and recording. This is the desired result. Poor contact with the contact pad or discharge in open air will produce a loud snapping sound and visible arc; this is not a desirable result.
The measuring instrument ceases capturing signal (either automatically or manually).
After the measuring instrument has recorded an interval of signal capture, the raw data file is saved with date/time stamp, make and model and serial number of the stun gun.
A second and third discharge from the stun gun is taken following the above steps.

Read the entire 'A Simple Field Test Procedure for Stun Guns' document from Rassettica Testing Limited (May 2016).

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Level III stun guns: 1 µC or greater

According to the National Institute of Justice, stun guns that emit 1 µC or more produce ‘unbearable pain’ (when used on most sober, emotionally stable people).

SABRE STUN GUN	PRODUCT SKU	MICROCOULOMBS (µC)
SABRE Maximum Strength Stun Gun with LED Flashlight (Industry's Highest Pain-Inducing Stun Gun)	S-2000SF	1.820
SABRE Dual Capacitor Stun Gun with LED Flashlight	S-1005	1.600
SABRE Ergonomic Stun Gun with Stop Strap	S-1008	1.480
SABRE Slim Stun Gun with LED Flashlight	S-1001	1.170
SABRE Tactical Stun Gun with LED Flashlight	S-1000SF	1.139

Level II stun guns: 0.5-1 µC

According to the National Institute of Justice, stun guns that emit 0.5 µC or more produce pain (when used on most sober, emotionally stable people).

SABRE STUN GUN	PRODUCT SKU	MICROCOULOMBS (µC)
SABRE Concealable Stun Gun with LED Flashlight	S-1006	0.845
SABRE Short Stun Gun with LED Flashlight	S-1007	0.704
Ruger Tactical Stun Gun with LED Flashlight	RU-S-J-185	0.515

Level I stun guns: less than 0.5 µC

Level I stun guns can be counted upon to product an intimidating sound and spark. However, they should not be your sole self-defense tool – just in case your attacker is not intimidated. SABRE does not currently manufacture any stun guns that fall into this category.