Silver Lifetime
Bronze Lifetime
- Messages
- 2,326
- Reactions
- 5,669
Ok, I am getting older and my old continuum of force hierarchy is getting less and less viable. In my younger days it was pretty simple; I carried a firearm for lethal force applications and for everything below that I could rely on my mass, strength and skills to control and deescalate a situation. I used to be decently far out on the physical capability bell curve so I never felt like I was leaving myself too much of a gap in capability. Nowadays, however, I am seeing more and more young bucks who would give me pause. It is not so bad that I feel like I am sitting below my comfort threshold, but I am moving in that direction, and I do not foresee moving back up that bell curve in the future.
So this is where the question comes in; what modern tech fits into my comfort threshold for less/non-lethal continuum of force options? Ye Oldyn Day options for things like tasers or pepper spray were decidedly less than optimal from my perspective. My benchmark for effectiveness was me, and being the brain dead and mostly numb monster that I am, the current offerings of the day -at best- merely made me more annoyed and less safe in practice sessions. Dust me with some spicy air freshener? My next grapple/jab/thrust was going to be a bit less accurate but a whole lot more irritated. Hit me with a consumer taser/stun stick or whatever? That tickles, stop it. I was just no all that impressed with anything out there.
But there is *ahem* a decade of improvement since I last gave this market space a good look (we are rounding here, don't ask for details). I am wondering if there is some spicy air fresheners or sparky light shows that would actually give some old b@astard of a bear actual pause to think "yeah, maybe I do actually want to be somewhere else right about now". We have known for ages that there are people resistant to these methods, so surely someone would have figure out a weakness to exploit and then package that exploit into a nice, easy to carry package? I am leery of products that simply state "we have 10 billion more spicy units/shocky sparks/ouch factors than the next leading brand!" I used to eat that stuff for dares when I was young and stupid, I am not sure if the same thing only more is really going to have that much of an impact.
Or maybe I have been thinking about this all wrong for years, and the scale should not be to make the angry, nearly immune old bear go away, but rather make the smelly bum you really don't want to get in a grapple with rethink his aggressive begging. I am not so sure of that, but I could use some convincing if so. What are ya'lls thoughts on the matter? Anything out there that is really good and worth keeping in a pocket? Or should I just get the thing with the biggest number on the package and call it good enough?
So this is where the question comes in; what modern tech fits into my comfort threshold for less/non-lethal continuum of force options? Ye Oldyn Day options for things like tasers or pepper spray were decidedly less than optimal from my perspective. My benchmark for effectiveness was me, and being the brain dead and mostly numb monster that I am, the current offerings of the day -at best- merely made me more annoyed and less safe in practice sessions. Dust me with some spicy air freshener? My next grapple/jab/thrust was going to be a bit less accurate but a whole lot more irritated. Hit me with a consumer taser/stun stick or whatever? That tickles, stop it. I was just no all that impressed with anything out there.
But there is *ahem* a decade of improvement since I last gave this market space a good look (we are rounding here, don't ask for details). I am wondering if there is some spicy air fresheners or sparky light shows that would actually give some old b@astard of a bear actual pause to think "yeah, maybe I do actually want to be somewhere else right about now". We have known for ages that there are people resistant to these methods, so surely someone would have figure out a weakness to exploit and then package that exploit into a nice, easy to carry package? I am leery of products that simply state "we have 10 billion more spicy units/shocky sparks/ouch factors than the next leading brand!" I used to eat that stuff for dares when I was young and stupid, I am not sure if the same thing only more is really going to have that much of an impact.
Or maybe I have been thinking about this all wrong for years, and the scale should not be to make the angry, nearly immune old bear go away, but rather make the smelly bum you really don't want to get in a grapple with rethink his aggressive begging. I am not so sure of that, but I could use some convincing if so. What are ya'lls thoughts on the matter? Anything out there that is really good and worth keeping in a pocket? Or should I just get the thing with the biggest number on the package and call it good enough?