Yes, I have used the 9 volt battery and steel wool to start fires. Cool trick. It takes a couple of hundred milliamperes of current to do that. Steel wool has a low resistance of only a few ohms which allows more current to heat up the strands.
But you can not do it with a properly designed zapper. A properly designed zapper only outputs 10 milliamperes or less which is not enough to heat the filaments. Duh!
Can't you dig up one singe WORTHWHILE objection without having to distort or stretch?