Tranquilliser gun

China Product


A tranquilizer gun, capture gun or dart gun, is a non-lethal gun which is intended for chemical capture. Tranquilizer guns shoot darts filled with tranquilizer that, when injected, temporarily sedate the animal so that it may be handled (or captured) safely. The tranquilizer can be a sedative, anaesthetic, or paralytic agent. Tranquilizer guns have a long history of being used to capture wildlife without injury. Tranquilizer darts can also be fired by crossbow or breath-powered blowgun.

History

The tranquilizer gun was invented in the 1950s by New Zealander Colin Murdoch. While working with colleagues who were studying introduced wild goat and deer populations in New Zealand, Murdoch had the idea that the animals would be much easier to catch, examine and release if a dose of tranquilizer could be administered by projection from afar. Murdoch went on to develop a range of rifles, darts and pistols which have had an enormous impact on the treatment and study of animals around the world. infrared therapy

At the time Murdoch started testing his gun the only tranquilizer drugs available were curare, and alkaloids of nicotine, both of which tended to have fatal reactions in a high percentage of animals shot. In partnership with pharmaceutical companies, he helped develop more sophisticated drugs with predictable and safe reactions. anaesthesia machine

In Kenya in the early 1960s, a team headed by Dr. Tony Pooley and Dr. Toni Harthoorn discovered that different species, despite being of roughly equal size (for example, the rhinoceros and the buffalo), needed very different doses and spectra of drugs to safely immobilise them. anesthesia machine

Characteristics

The dart, essentially a ballistic syringe loaded with an immobilising drug and hypodermic needle, is propelled from the gun by means of compressed gas. In flight, the dart is stabilised by a tailpiece, a tuft of fibrous material, making it behave somewhat like a badminton shuttlecock. By substituting a different tailpiece, the same syringe design may be used interchangeably in airguns and blowguns. The needle may be plain, or collared; a collared needle has a barb-like circumferential ring that improves retention of the needle and syringe for recovery and to assure that the full dose is administered.

On impact with the animal, the momentum of a steel ball at the rear of the dart pushes the syringe plunger and injects the dose of barbiturate or other drug into the animal. The drug causes torpor and prostration within minutes. Because of the power of the drugs, the handlers then have to move quickly to secure the animal for transport, monitor its vital signs, protect its eyes and ears, and then inject antidotes when needed. Many large animals are acutely sensitive to stress and can easily die without careful treatment; in order to counter stress in targeted animals the gun is quiet, and there is usually a valve on the gun to control the dart velocity.

Tranquilizer agents

Several immobilising drugs have been invented for use in tranquillizer darts. These include:

Azaperone

Combelen (Bayer)

Domosedan (Farmos)

Dormicum (Roche)

Detomidine (Farmos)

Fentanyl (Janssen Pharmaceutica)

Etorphine hydrochloride (M99, Novartis)

Haloperidol (Kyron Laboratory)

Immobilon, a mixture of etorphine and a phenothioazine tranquilizer such as acepromazine or methotrimeprazine.

Serenace (Searle)

Valium 10 (Roche)

Xylazine (Rompun, Bayer)

These substances have been invented for animal injection only. Humans are far more affected by the drugs, as they trigger respiratory problems. The injection or consumption of only a drop of M99 is sufficient to kill an adult man within a few minutes if the correct antidote treatment is not administered immediately. Therefore, instead of the substances found above, only incapacitating agents would be suitable for military or police use.

Military and police use

Tranquillizer darts are not generally included in military or police less-than-lethal arsenals because no drug is yet known that would be quickly and reliably effective on humans without the risks of side effects or an overdose. This as effective use requires an estimate of weight to be able to determine how many darts (if any) can be fired on the human target. Shooting too few would result in no effect whatsoever, while too many can kill the target.

Examples

Some examples of dart guns include:

Paxarms Mark 24B dart gun

Pneu-Dart equipment Model 190B Air Activated Pistol

Pneu-Dart equipment Model 179B CO2 Pistol

Pneu-Dart equipment Model 178 Air Activated Rifle

Pneu-Dart equipment X-Caliber

Pneu-Dart equipment Model 176B CO2 Powered Rifle

Daystate Tranquilliser and Airgun Manufacturers Equipment Mark1 dart gun

Daystate Tranquilliser and Airgun Manufacturers Equipment Ranger dart gun

Palmer Cap-Chur Short Range Projector

Palmer Cap-Chur Mid Range Projector

Palmer Cap-Chur Long Range Projector

Palmer Cap-Chur Extra Long Range Projector

References

^ What is chemical capture?

^ Anaesthetics also used in dart guns

^ NZ Edge Heroes biography of Colin Murdoch

^ Tranquilizer agents

^ Tranquilliser agents

^ According to James Butts, Santa Monica, California Chief of Police, "Tranquilizing agents don't affect everyone uniformly. Therefore you cannot predict whether or not you have a sufficient dose to tranquilize the individual. Second, any tranquilizer will take time to enter the bloodstream and sedate the individual. If someone is advancing on you with a deadly weapon or a threatening object, there's no way a tranquilizer would take effect in the two to three seconds it would take someone to seriously injure you." Quoted by: Buren, Abigail Van. "Could Police Use Tranquilizer Darts?." San Francisco Chronicle. (June 8, 1997): 73.

^ Dart guns

^ Palmer Cap-chur projectors

Sources and literature

Harthoorn, Antonie Marinus, The Flying Syringe 

Harthoorn, Antonie Marinus, The Chemical Capture of Animals 

Anti-personnel dart design

Blow gun innoculating dart design

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