I've been working on this for a little bit after diving into pepperball launcher research. Most of this is probably pretty obvious to the subscribers here but I wanted to post something that would come up in searches as I haven't seen much realistic criticism of these devices. My apologies for the length.Please Stop Buying Self Defense TalismansI remember the first time I saw a pepperball launcher on the internet. I immediately recognized it as a repurposed and significantly upcharged paintball gun. I was outraged that anyone would spend so much for a low end Tippmann painted orange. I have no idea what relation the actual manufacturer of these guns has with the pepperball or similar resellers but I’ve seen other models rebadged as less lethal or law enforcement models over the years. Every time a new one pops up I wonder who the hell is buying these things? I could understand some utility for a law enforcement agency, but what purpose does your average citizen have for a shitty gun? Then a few months ago I started seeing the much more aggressive marketing for the Byrna launchers and things started to fall into place. These devices, like most self defense products, are intended for people who don’t do the think real good.What is a self defense talisman? Like a self defense tool, it’s any object that someone chooses to posses or seeks out with the intent of using for personal protection. However the difference is the talisman either isn’t effective, is unnecessary, or isn’t likely to be deployed at all. Tools can be talismans if they aren’t treated seriously as well so the line is a bit blurred. A talisman is an item that someone buys to feel better but doesn’t seriously plan on ever using. For example, an electric stun gun is a talisman because it’s tactically worthless. It relies on a low level of pain to deter an attack, however it also requires direct contact so it has zero range. Furthermore, pain compliance isn’t really a great way to stop someone from assaulting you. A stun gun is effectively an electric slap and nothing more. Yet people still buy them and give them to their girlfriends and daughters without ever giving much thought to how the thing would actually work or be utilized, if at all. An actually useful tool, like pepper spray, could also be considered a talisman if an individual keeps it buried at the bottom of their bag or otherwise out of reach, or if they don’t even know how to use it.So lets get back to Byrna and other pepper projectile launchers. What’s appealing about them? Well first and foremost they look cool and intimidating. That checks the box needed for people to consider spending a few hundred dollars. If it looks cool then people will find ways to justify it. Secondly its widely considered to be non or less than lethal force. So more people will be willing to utilize if they don’t think it will kill or seriously harm anyone. There is also an assumption that it’s basically pepper spray but better. The idea is that shooting the little pepper filled capsules gives the user better effective range. Another positive is that you can buy extra pepper capsules, or inert ones as well as extra CO2 and therefore you can actually practice with them. This is actually a very good thing. So it looks intimidating, it’s less than lethal, and it’s better than pepper spray. This sounds great. Except it isn’tThere are some serious flaws with the use case for this type of product. While touted as less than lethal this is still an airgun and airguns are often legally considered weapons, especially when used against another individual. Normal pepper spray is essentially a liquid, foam, or mist that you spray in someones face to irritate their eyes and nose. The pepper spray will irritate someone but the impact of the liquid won’t actually harm them. A pepper ball is a hollow capsule filled with irritant powder. When the capsule breaks the powder disperses into the air and works its way into the attacker’s eyes and nose, causing irritation. Both options dissuade an attacker the exact same way but the delivery method is different. The main criticism of pepper spray is that it won’t be effective 100% of the time and it takes a few seconds to kick in. And yet pepper spray is still the most direct method possible for delivering the spicy payload because it’s intended to fire directly at someones face, this avoids the step where the pepper ball needs to eject its contents into the air and then make contact. Unfortunately the pepper launcher cannot be fired at someone’s face. If you do this you’re firing an airgun into someones eyes and while that may not kill them it does stand a very good chance of blinding them or causing serious injury, sorry pacifists. Since doing this would drastically increase the risk of serious injury it wouldn’t be considered deadly force but it would likely be considered a cause of great bodily harm which is a higher step of force than simple pepper spray and wouldn’t be justified in the same situations. Byrna also sells these solid balls marketed as “kinetic” which are just projectiles that don’t break apart on impact. The idea is this would rely on the pain of direct impact to dissuade an attacker. I would imagine that these could cause even more injury than a misplaced pepperball. So depending on your aim and choice of ammunition, you may now have something that more closely resembles a firearm than you expected. The use of any projectile could be considered an unjustified escalation if the situation never warranted serious force. Now your pepper-spray-but-better is actually just a really shitty gun.Let’s get back to range, does it really matter? One of the things people don’t often consider is how they could justify shooting anything over distance at someone else in self defense. I don’t want to get into the details of legal self defense here since it really does depend on where you live, but generally speaking, you might be hard pressed to justify shooting someone with a pepper ball if they’re 50 or more feet away. If you’ve ever shot a paintball gun you’ll know that these types of launchers can be extremely inaccurate. The projectiles degrade and dimple over time which will cause them to hook violently in all different directions. This can be remedied by ensuring you replace the pepperballs regularly but at $30+ for ten rounds that could add up over time. A pepperball would be a terrible choice for very close range use or anywhere indoors because the intent is to fill the air with powder, the same air you’re breathing. A pepper spray will sometimes have splash back as well but at least you aren’t filling the area with a cloud of irritant.Next lets talk about the intimidation factor. These launchers are intimidating because they look like guns. The natural temptation is to carry one of these when and where you aren’t able to legally carry a real gun. However even the smallest of these launchers is still much larger than a typical handgun. So you probably aren’t concealing it. Since these look just like guns I hope you don’t plan on openly carrying it either. So when will you carry a Byrna launcher? Never. You Wont. There’s nothing convenient about an extremely conspicuous gun shaped object. Even if it’s painted orange or yellow, if someone sees you packing that thing they’re going to assume it’s a real firearm and report you. So maybe you think you’ll leave it in your car. But for what? So when you feel unsafe you can carry a conspicuously gun shaped object in your hand in public? I suppose you could keep it in a purse or shoulder bag as long as it was readily accessibly and you didn’t leave it lying around. This may actually be decent use for it since it negates the downsides of off body CCW by not being a deadly weapon. If someone ran off with your Byrna launcher in your purse they didn’t get a real firearm, just a widely available paintball gun. However, at least where I live, a loaded Byrna would legally be considered a dangerous weapon and ultimately prohibited. So even if your launcher isn’t technically deadly, it still may be illegal to carry.Reliability is also a major concern. These are items that you should use and practice with frequently. Not just for developing muscle memory but to ensure proper function. Any air powered launcher whether it be a paintball gun, pellet gun, or airsoft gun, can develop unexpected leaks over time. I wouldn’t count on a launcher to remain pressurized for more than a few hours, even if it technically can, unless you have some way to verify that it’s active. Some launchers don’t pressurize themselves until the first shot. This is a great design choice but it doesn’t ensure that the launcher will actually function when it is pressurized and if you haven’t shot it in over a year I wouldn’t be planning on it working at all. I don’t mean to say that these guns will be so unreliable that they will never work, but their rubber seals will degrade over time and unless you replace them regularly and test the launcher, you don’t know if it functions. You also don’t know how the launcher will fail. Some systems can handle a slight leak and will just fire fewer shots or with less velocity. Others may seize up completely. This is very dependent on the actual hardware and design. In the previous section I discussed how the projectiles can degrade over time. I’ve also read reports of them bursting in the magazine or the gun itself. While not life threatening this would be an extremely inconvenient situation. I also know for a fact that most of the magazines for these launchers will eject the loaded rounds fairly easily. Pepperballs are basically paintballs and these launchers are basically paintball guns. Magazine fed paintballs guns have this problem because the balls are well….ball shaped. What I mean is there’s nothing about their shape that inherently holds them into the magazine. A handgun cartridge is a cylinder. So when the magazine spring forces it up towards the top the feed lips of the magazine hold it inside. To get the round out of the magazine the mechanism pushes the top most cartridge forward to strip it out of the feed lips. A round pepperball goes into and out of the magazine directly from the top through an open port. While outside of the gun the pepperball is held in by a springloaded latch that blocks the port at the top of the magazine. When the magazine is inserted the gun itself will depress the latch and allow balls to feed. If you bump this latch while it isn’t in the gun all of the balls will fountain out of the magazine. This makes carrying spare magazines more complicated than you might think and if you reload under pressure there’s a pretty good chance you will inadvertantly hit the spring latch on some launchers.So what are some actual use cases for these launchers?The most obvious purpose for these launchers is for people who can’t have firearms. Whether it’s because they’re legally disqualified, not old enough, or because the red tape to ownership is too arduous. For this demographic these launchers could be an appealing option. The downside to this is that carrying and having them with you in public is very inconvenient and potentially illegal. In many locations where firearm ownership or CCW is very restrictive, carrying a loaded airgun is also restricted. In these cases, a simple can of pepper spray might be cheaper and even more effective.Individuals may also be attracted to these launchers for home defense. Again, the assumption is that you can’t or are unwilling to own or use an actual firearm in this capacity. Still, think carefully about how this may be used. I would rule out pepper rounds in my own home. That just seems like a poor idea and would almost certainly expose you to the irritant powder. You could perhaps use them if you were in a yard but I’d prefer to just go inside and lock the doors. You could however use the kinetic rounds indoors. I’m not sure how effective they would be but if someone was intruding I would utilize any deterrence I could, even if it was just a shitty gun. Yet for indoor home defense my mind does drift to higher capacity options that don’t need to be concealed.Another, and perhaps the most logical use case would be against aggressive or problematic animals. I can think of a number of hypothetical situations where a coyote or aggressive dog is too close for comfort. Sending a pepper ball or two in its general direction may be enough to convince it to leave the area. I could see just shooting a pepperball at the ground nearby being effective for a too curious animal, all without posing any risk or disturbance to neighbors. I’ve had several close encounters with coyotes where I wasn’t being attacked but was certainly uncomfortable and firearm would have been a poor choice. Still, even in these situations, a can of pepper spray likely would have sufficed and ultimately I just went inside and turned the flood lights on. So would a pepper launcher really have been necessary? Not really.At the end of the day these are interesting devices that have sort of invented a need to exist, a solution in search of a problem so they say. Pepperball launchers probably aren’t suitable for what you would expect and even if they are, pepper spray is almost always cheaper, more convenient, and more effective. A simple 2oz can of pepper spray is small enough for a pocket or bag, lasts for 3 years or longer, contains multiple shots, and is dirt simple to operate. Depending on your needs you can get it in a smaller or larger capacity as well. Hell, bear spray has been around forever and for good reason. For the price of one pepperball launching pistol you could buy 10-20 pepper spray canisters. That’s enough to last a few decades at least. via /r/CCW https://ift.tt/kSeAXiN
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