Please for the love of god make harmbaton stun both, not just the batoner.

[Dr Zoidcrab]

I honestly think it's mainly there to make people think about what they're doing, as Ed has said.  If you go into Security and you have no idea Intent means different things for certain situations, you kinda deserve a tazer to the face.

I could go in depth if you want, but I feel I may be over analyzing the shit out of this.
Spoiler!

As security, your job is to try to bring in crimers whenever possible (to make it more challenging for bad guys).  Your baton is set to be ready to do this, right out the box locker, and the only other weapons you have without HoS clearance are the tazer, the flash, and flashbangs.  The baton is pretty much the only thing that can do lethal harm reliably, so after stunning someone safely, you have to switch it so you're killing someone rather than safely trying to bring them in (I suppose as literal turning the safety off as you can get).  Turning safety off takes a bit of time, meaning you have a small amount of time to determine if it's really necessary (usually the answer is OF FUCKING COURSE IT IS, but go with it for a moment).  Basically, not removing the safety and attacking someone with it is the game reminding you to consider your actions and punishing you for it (hopefully with repeated farting on and looting of you at worst)

Given how fast paced the game is now I don't think security needs mechanics designed to slow them down at best or at worst have them punished for trying to do their job. It's fairly common practice after downing someone to switch to harm intent to taser them point-blank, usually leaving you with an empty taser. If you then want to stun that player again, for instance if you don't want them to run if bumped, you have to switch back to help intent and baton them. If they then turn out to be an antag (like a rev for example, and you have no implants) you then have to switch off the baton and switch to harm intent to hit them. This all feels like needless busywork to me, and if you can't make decisions on the best course of action to take before you start beating the shit out of someone you're not fit to play security. That's something that should be handled on a per-player basis, not by making security's life harder in general.