Some self-defense odds and ends

Those of you who have done some reading about self-defense, particularly about self-defense products, may have encountered some of the extremely pessimistic views some self-defense experts have about self-defense products in general, pepper spray included.

These articles generally point out the flaws of the various types of self-defense weapons in particular, e.g., stun guns require you and your assailant to be a little too intimate, pepper sprays require you to aim, etc. They usually go on to make their real main point, which is that none of these products can replace awareness of one's surroundings and intelligent behavior. On that latter point, these pessimistic self-defense experts are quite right. Consider the ultimate self defense product, a device with a single button, and all you had to do was press the button and any assailant would vanish into the ether without a need for aiming. This super-weapon would still do you no good if it's buried deep in a large purse, tangled up with something else in your pocket, sitting next to your bed at home, etc.

We law-abiding citizens do need to realize that criminals are not completely stupid, and they are also lazy. Confronting you verbally and announcing their intentions could lead to your defending yourself effectively, which would be all too much work. Instead, a sneak attack is more likely. No matter what weapon you have, if it is not in hand, and even then, if you are not aware of your surroundings, you will have neither the time nor the ability to use your self-defense product effectively.

So by all means, take this truth from what these experts say: first and foremost you must be aware of your surroundings, and you must be proactive in the deployment of your self-defense product. When walking through a dark parking lot or down a dark street, look around, and have your product in your hand. The virtue of this sort of behavior is twofold. First, you obviously will be  better able to defend yourself in the case of an attack. If you notice a suspicious character approaching you, and you have your product at the ready, then you can deploy it at the first sign of trouble. Second, and more importantly, remember what I said about criminals being lazy? Simply by being aware of your surroundings you have made yourself a less attractive target. People who are looking around are much more difficult to surprise than someone making a beeline for their car while looking at their phone.

Having agreed with these pessimistic experts so far, I must now part ways with at least some of them. Some of them implicitly, if not explicitly, discourage the carrying of self-defense products because they tend to cause more problems than they solve. Instead, they encourage practicing awareness and learning to use your body as a weapon. While both of these are incredibly useful skills, especially the former, I can't advocate doing this INSTEAD OF carrying a self-defense product. For one thing, you should be practicing awareness anyway; practicing awareness does not preclude carrying a self-defense product. For another, there are many drawbacks to focusing on one's body as their only self-defense weapon.

First, one's body suffers from a magnified version of the problem that faces stun guns, kubotans, and the like, in that it requires you and your assailant to be in very close proximity. What's worse, your body, even when well trained, is still slightly less effective than your body PLUS something like a kubotan or expandable baton. all else being held equal. I can do far more damage with a steel baton than Bas Rutten can with his fist; that's just simple physics, and is the case despite Bas Rutten's being one of the most well-trained strikers on the planet.

Second, to use one's body effectively does require a good deal of training. The average person simply isn't skilled enough to use their body as an effective weapon. To get to the point where one is skilled enough can take years of intensive training, and that's just to get to a point where you're still not as effective as I would be with a baton and minimal training. The return on investment is just not high enough. That is all true without even considering the fact that large segments of the population, indeed, the very segments of the population most likely to need to engage in self-defense, are simply not large enough/fit enough to use their body as a self-defense weapon. After all, a thug  looking to lift a wallet off someone is probably not going to pick an athletic looking 6' 3", 220 pound male. He'll go after a 5'4", 120 pound female instead. Here I'd like to point out that there are weight classes in combat sports for a reason. Beyond a certain point, weight discrepancies will all but zero out the contribution of skill to the outcome of a fight.

As a case in point, I once took a kung-fu/self-defense course in college (the things we do to get our 'physical activity' credits), and for one of the lessons we focused on techniques for breaking someone's hold on a wrist or arm. As you might expect, during the class we had to practice these techniques on each other. I made the mistake of thinking that we were supposed to pretend this was real life, and gripped my training partner (a female, although not a petite one) on the wrist as firmly as I could. I'm a fairly large guy, and the difference in strength was just too much; the technique just wouldn't work, so the instructor told me not to grip so hard. I know, I know, the technique was probably not so well thought out, but still, the point stands: technique and skill only counts for so much. That's why there are weight classes in combat sports, and why men and women compete separately: size matters, and it matters a LOT.

The moral of the story is that relying on hand-to-hand self-defense is incredibly risky business. Yes, awareness of one's surroundings is primary, and yes, if possible, running should always be preferred, but for those situations in which a confrontation does arise, or an attack takes place, I am quite reasonable to want something other than my body to use as a weapon.

This all basically boils down to the following question: assuming that I am paying attention to my surroundings as I should, what self-defense weapon will allow me to escape unharmed in the highest percentage of cases? Note that I am not asking what self-defense weapon will make me invincible; obviously nothing can do that. Even if you wear Kevlar and carry an AR-15 in plain sight, you would still be overwhelmed in any number of scenarios. So, it's not an adequate argument against carrying some self-defense weapon to say "Oh, but in situation X, what good is that going to do you?" To put it bluntly, there will always be situations where you are just screwed despite your best efforts. Your goal is simply to minimize these chances at the lowest cost to your quality of life and wallet.

Having said that, your body, kubotans, brass knuckles, stun guns,  and knives all suffer from what I consider to be a fatal flaw: they simply require you to be too close to your assailant. I have a handy rule of thumb when it comes to choosing self-defense products: if you wouldn't choose it for defense from a bear attack, don't bother at all. No one would choose a knife for use against a bear, because by the time you're close enough to use it, the bear's close enough to maul you. Even if you kill the bear (unlikely), you will be seriously injured/killed yourself. That, my friends, is the key. Choice of a self-defense weapon is not about how much damage you can do to your assailant. Knives, kubotans,  and brass knuckles are all more than capable of outright killing people; in self-defense, though, we are concerned with preserving our well-being, not diminishing that of others. I might be able to kill all of my assailants with a handy sharp knife, but if one of them is using a knife as well, an unlucky cut could leave me dead as well. That my assailants are also dead does me no good. The point in self-defense, then is to avoid harm, and being able to use your weapon at range contributes heavily to that.

The problem with guns, as I mentioned very briefly early in this blog, is that they are illegal to carry in many areas, and their use, even in justified self-defense situations, often comes with a heavy legal price. What's more, even when you can conceal carry, you can't legally walk to your car with your gun in hand; again, if you don't have your weapon in hand, it's going to be useless in most self-defense situations. It just takes too long to draw a weapon even when it's easily accessible. Also, to stay practiced enough to shoot your handgun accurately under stress is quite expensive. Handgun ammunition, especially in the calibers that are actually worth using for self-defense, is far from cheap, so the number of rounds you have to go through to stay in top form is just not practical for many people.

Quality pepper spray in a cone fog has many virtues that make it about as good of a self-defense weapon as any we ordinary folk will have access to for a while. First, pepper sprays are relatively cheap, so we don't have to worry about breaking the bank. Second, there's not a whole lot of skill needed to spray out a fog in someone's general direction. Third, quality pepper sprays are nearly instantly incapacitating. The moment it gets in your eyes, you can't see, and the fogs also cause acute respiratory distress. Fourth, with fogs, you can just spray out a fog between you and your assailants and run. The fog will linger, so chasing you has its disadvantages. Finally, since capsaicin doesn't cause permanent damage, you don't have to worry about using excessive force or getting sued for wrongful death.

In summary, be aware of your surroundings, keep your weapon (preferably a Fox Labs cone fog) in hand during at-risk activities like walking to your car at night, be prepared to run before engaging, and if you must engage, engage only enough to allow you to run. This is self-defense in a nutshell.

With this monstrous post, I am probably going to retire this ocsprayreviews blog. I had expected it to take much more time to test the various sprays, but now I've pretty much run out of material. What will likely happen is that I will start a more general purpose blog, and will export these posts to that blog.

'Till next time!

Final assessments

I had promised in a previous post that I would do a second round of testing, comparing the current front-runner, Fox Labs, against some comparable units. In particular, I had wanted to test some of Sabre's highest strength formulation, since what I had acquired previously was actually half the strength of their strongest formulation. I also wanted to try some of the units from guardpd.com, since they give extremely complete information on all their products. Alas, this second round of testing will not be happening, at least not for some time.

What eventually dissuaded me from going for a second round of testing was the subject of my previous post: responsiveness to customers. The following is a list of the manufacturers I contacted and the state of their response:

Fox Labs: Responses were timely, and I got a phone call with the owner of the company. High marks!

Sabre (SEC): They don't have an email listed on their website, and my phone calls (there were 2), have not been returned. On this score they're not even in the same league with Fox Labs.

GuardPD: I received a reply in a fairly timely fashion, but the reply was completely disjointed and did not answer any of the questions  I asked in my email. I had asked some very specific questions in my email, and the "answers" I got were less informative than my question! It is possible (I hope this is the case, actually) that there was some sort of language barrier, because the English was atrocious, so perhaps my questions were simply not understood. Either way, despite the timely response, they too score well below Fox Labs.

UDAP: This was perhaps the most disappointing of all of them. They seem to be a reputable company that puts out quality products and provides accurate information about their products, and their maximum strength formulation is listed as incredibly potent. Unfortunately, I have yet to hear back from them. I sent an initial email over a week ago, and when after a week I hadn't heard back from them, I forwarded it to them again. Still no response. The complete lack of responsiveness to customers is a shame, since the company seemed so solid otherwise.

At any rate, since Fox Labs was leading the pack in terms of testing anyway, and went on to do resoundingly well in the customer responsiveness department, I have to say that I will be going with Fox Labs for my pepper spray, and it is my recommendation to all of you as well!

The hidden side of choosing a pepper spray

So far on this blog, I've spent a decent bit of text talking about the science of pepper sprays and the results of my subjective tests of various pepper sprays. However, when it comes to choosing a pepper spray, there is an aspect worth consideration that is only indirectly related to anything about the performance of the spray itself, and that is the disposition of the company towards its customers.

Some brands of pepper spray are completely manufactured by a single, visible company (Sabre and Fox Labs are two good examples of this). Others don't seem to be tied to anything resembling a company at all (Wildfire is a good example of this; it just seems to be a brand name on a bunch of canisters of sprays floating about the internet).

Now, in general, visibility of a company is a splendid thing. With visibility comes (usually) accountability. After all, there's a company to point our fingers at. That's not always the case, though. Sometimes a large, visible company is big enough that they don't care if one person complains to them.

So, with that said, I figured I'd write up a little post that compared the major manufacturers on this score. I have sent out inquiries to most of these companies, and they have had quite different levels of (non)response.

Fox Labs was amazingly responsive. I sent an email asking some questions about quality control and the like, and within a day I had a phone call with the owner of the company! He was a little pushy/salesy, but I suppose that's to be expected. Still, a response from the owner of the company to little old me? High marks for that!

On the other hand, Security Equipment Corporation (the company behind Sabre Red), has yet to respond to the phone inquiry I made regarding the potency of their sprays (I mentioned that I had made this call in the post where I reviewed three of their products). Perhaps this was just bad luck, but when combined with the fact that they don't even list an email on their site, I'm a little underwhelmed by their customer service.

UDAP has yet to respond to an email I sent 4 days ago, so I'm losing a little faith in them as well.

I just sent an email to guardpd, so we'll see how responsive they are.

Fox Labs (2% OC, 5,300,000 SHU)

I finally got to test out a unit from Fox Labs, and I must say, it did not disappoint. The canisters themselves seemed to be of a high quality, and the spray pattern was easily the best of all the units I've tested so far. It manages a decent cone fog with a range of a little more than 10 feet, by the looks of it. Of course, this unit is also the largest I've tested (4 oz), so I would expect a little more power.

The formula itself was also impressive. In terms of sensation it performed similarly to the Wildfire I tested, strangely enough. The two of them were the only ones that managed enough of a burn on my forearm to be painful (along the lines of a bad sunburn). The respiratory effects were also quite pronounced, although that was to expected, since it sprays out in a fog.

All in all, the Fox Labs 4 oz unit is easily the best product I've tried so far. It's tied with Wildfire for effectiveness on forearm skin, but the manufacturing quality is higher, and unlike Wildfire, there's an actual company with a website and a physical location I can go to for answers, complaints (not likely), requests for information, etc.

In the next month or so, I plan on acquiring several more sprays and performing another round of testing, this time of similarly sized units that are supposed to be the best the manufacturer has to offer.

The lineup will be as follows:

Fox Labs 5.3, 4 oz (current best)
Sabre Red, 4.4 oz (the real, 1.33% stuff this time)
UDAP Mugger Fogger
Guardian Protective Devices 10%, 4 oz

Possibles:

Wildfire, 4 oz (As I said, I'm still somewhat tempted to give this a shot)
Defense Technology 1.3% major capsaicinoids (I'm not sure if they sell to non-law enforcement yet)

Until next time!