BNW Ch 15-16: Riot Control?

"Three men with spraying machines buckled to their shoulders pumped thick clouds of soma vapour into the air... Carrying water pistols charged with a powerful anesthetic, four others had pushed their way into the crowd and were methodically laying out, squirt by squirt, the more ferocious of the fighters" (Huxley 214).

Controlling a riot is a tough job. Not only is it hard to part such a violent mass of people, but doing so often results in injury, if not death. Police have no methods to deal with protesters that are non violent, they only have methods to disable or hurt large numbers of people. If police had a gas that instead of choking induced euphoria, police would be able to be a lot more careful in handling violent individuals. Being able to replace tasers with anesthesia guns also seems like a vast improvement. Anesthetics are probably much safer than high voltage. By reducing the violence of our police force, technology could yet again advance our society.