Self-defense, what do you recommend?

[Katie N]

It does when you respond with lethal force to non lethal force.

Not automatic just because you kill someone.

[Shiny212]

@Ghostpanther This is a derail, please take it to the gun control thread. Don't keep feeding him.



Tell that to the dead in various recent attacks. Just because it doesn't suit your narrative, doesn't change that they've been increasingly used for mass carnage. You came into a thread with a rational question to post a smartass picture and pretty much nation bashing. You haven't gotten any better.

Nation bashing? You think you speak for ALL Americans when you say, trucks are the "real" issue and the gun control system is fine as is? Talk about smartass. I lament the situation, and offer my sympathies to the no doubt MANY sensible US citizens that also feel your system of gun ownership is defective and dangerous.

[XDurionX]

They're derailing it into gun control shit.

People argue that it is unreasonable to own a gun for self defense, which it is. Nobody is talking about gun control.

[shadowmouse]

You think you speak for ALL Americans when you say, trucks are the "real" issue and the gun control system is fine as is?

Now go read what I actually wrote instead of what you would like to imagine.

Nobody is talking about gun control.

Except for guys like the one in the post right above you using the exact words "gun control" Whether you believe it is unreasonable goes to a question what the laws should be. There is a thread for that. This thread asks about self defense, OP is in the US and a gun is a legal option.

[Yvaelle]

@Simca @Iliyra @Ryme @Yvaelle Can we please get the derail redirected to the appropriate thread for gun control?

I'm powerless here, I'm a Priest mod

That said now that I'm here - the only right answer on your poll is "Self-defense course".

A good self-defense course is going to teach you the most important keys to surviving an attacker.

1) Avoid conflict, don't confront them, don't fight them, don't try to kill them. Run or hide, then call the cops and let them deal with it. 9 times out of 10, no matter how much of a badass you are, that's the best option for any self-defense scenario. If you are worried about your self-defense, do some regular cardio - outrunning your enemy works almost every time. Either you are faster than them, or you aren't worth chasing.

2) Knife. All the other weapons on the list are not easily accessible 90% of the time.

An alarm or whistle device is a good option if you can get to it but it may not be immediately obvious to anyone hearing it what it means, it would be nice if there was a standard and very distinct rape whistle noise internationally - but there isn't yet - so neighbours etc are most likely to just think someone is being an asshole with a loud whistle.

Pepper Spray and Mace are not reliable weapons, and are not quick on the draw - if someone attacks you are they aren't going to let you dig around in your purse/backpack, find your pepperspray, pull it out of the holster, uncap it, remove the safety, position yourself upwind, and then point it at their unshielded face - the sequence of events for this to work is long and difficult, the risk of failure is high.

A gun falls under the same issues with some caveats. A gun is great if you are going to carry it on your person, loaded and ready all the time. If you do, you probably also look like some sort of militia-type dude with a camo jacket, combat boots, a beer gut, and a testy desire to kill someone, anyone, if you could only justify it by self-defense. You are pretty low on the totem pole of desirable victims for an attacker, and that perception is protecting you more than your gun.

If your gun isn't on you it isn't protecting you. If it isn't loaded it isn't protecting you. If the safety is on it isn't protecting you. If you don't have the fluid reactions of a veteran, it isn't protecting you. If you aren't a marksmen it isn't protecting you. If your attacker is within 21 feet before you recognize the attack, it isn't protecting you. If they draw first it isn't protecting you. If the attack is over before you know what's going on, it isn't protecting you. If you respond poorly to the stress of the attack, it isn't protecting you. A gun is an offensive weapon.

So ya, TL;DR:
1) Avoid/Run
2) Wait until they close into melee (so they can't see your hands), then pull a knife and stab them repeatedly (prison shanking)

[Strawberry]

As someone who has survived a war. I can tell you one thing, if someone wants you hurt, you'll get hurt.
Out of those things, they can help greatly, or make things even worse. Some will be completely useless. It's very situational.
I'd say the best protection is a hand grenade. And I'm serious about this. I want to see some motherfucked come rape or mug you when you pull that pin out and taunt them to make you release it. But I wouldn't recommend going after that person especially if he/she has a gun

[McFuu]

I also suggest a knife. Knives don't jam and most smart people are afraid of knives. You can do way more damage with a knife and you'll never be accused of "shooting in the back" or using an inappropriate amount of force. If a person is close enough to use a knife on, you are using the appropriate force.

And I mean a real knife, with a proper grip, something that is meant for stabbing people.

[Yvaelle]

As someone who has survived a war. I can tell you one thing, if someone wants you hurt, you'll get hurt.
Out of those things, they can help greatly, or make things even worse. Some will be completely useless. It's very situational.
I'd say the best protection is a hand grenade. And I'm serious about this. I want to see some motherfucked come rape or mug you when you pull that pin out and taunt them to make you release it. But I wouldn't recommend going after that person especially if he/she has a gun

Oh god.... I mean fair point, but now I'm envisioning a world where people open carry hand grenades for self-defense.

[lewdest]

Carry a pipebomb on you, so if anyone attacks you they die too.

[Amerrol]

Honestly, if I could have a career working from home...I totally would.

I'm in sales, and my "office work" is done at home, so I get to spend half my week working from home. It's amazing. The other half is a lot of traveling though.

[Celista]

I'm powerless here, I'm a Priest mod

That said now that I'm here - the only right answer on your poll is "Self-defense course".

A good self-defense course is going to teach you the most important keys to surviving an attacker.

1) Avoid conflict, don't confront them, don't fight them, don't try to kill them. Run or hide, then call the cops and let them deal with it. 9 times out of 10, no matter how much of a badass you are, that's the best option for any self-defense scenario. If you are worried about your self-defense, do some regular cardio - outrunning your enemy works almost every time. Either you are faster than them, or you aren't worth chasing.

2) Knife. All the other weapons on the list are not easily accessible 90% of the time.

An alarm or whistle device is a good option if you can get to it but it may not be immediately obvious to anyone hearing it what it means, it would be nice if there was a standard and very distinct rape whistle noise internationally - but there isn't yet - so neighbours etc are most likely to just think someone is being an asshole with a loud whistle.

Pepper Spray and Mace are not reliable weapons, and are not quick on the draw - if someone attacks you are they aren't going to let you dig around in your purse/backpack, find your pepperspray, pull it out of the holster, uncap it, remove the safety, position yourself upwind, and then point it at their unshielded face - the sequence of events for this to work is long and difficult, the risk of failure is high.

A gun falls under the same issues with some caveats. A gun is great if you are going to carry it on your person, loaded and ready all the time. If you do, you probably also look like some sort of militia-type dude with a camo jacket, combat boots, a beer gut, and a testy desire to kill someone, anyone, if you could only justify it by self-defense. You are pretty low on the totem pole of desirable victims for an attacker, and that perception is protecting you more than your gun.

If your gun isn't on you it isn't protecting you. If it isn't loaded it isn't protecting you. If the safety is on it isn't protecting you. If you don't have the fluid reactions of a veteran, it isn't protecting you. If you aren't a marksmen it isn't protecting you. If your attacker is within 21 feet before you recognize the attack, it isn't protecting you. If they draw first it isn't protecting you. If the attack is over before you know what's going on, it isn't protecting you. If you respond poorly to the stress of the attack, it isn't protecting you. A gun is an offensive weapon.

So ya, TL;DR:
1) Avoid/Run
2) Wait until they close into melee (so they can't see your hands), then pull a knife and stab them repeatedly (prison shanking)

You bring up good points. I was thinking about wind, too, in regards to sprays, but I think that's more of a concern with bear spray (which tends to be more of a mist) than pepper sprays, designed for humans, which seem to be more of a stream.

Just tested the pepper spray that arrived in the mail, it was this pathetically tiny stream of pepper spray. Honestly, a newborn infant could pee out a stronger stream than this pepper spray did. Which honestly was pretty shocking to me. This is what they tell people is proper personal defense in emergency situations? I couldn't smell anything at all after using the spray. I'd have to be extremely lucky with aiming the spray into someone's eyes and considering the size of the stream, we would have to be less than a foot or MAYBE two feet for it to hit the target accurately. This was the product https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1 and I can honestly say the "impressive 10 foot range" was complete fucking bullshit. And it definitely did not provide "powerful stream delivery" as advertised.

Is there a website that actually rates self-defense products objectively? I think these Amazon reviews are bullshit.

I think the nice thing about pepper sprays is that if you're walking alone at night, you can have it in your hand while walking and no one is really going to notice, or mistake you for an attacker. I'm pretty sure walking around carrying a knife will generate some unwanted attention. Having a knife has the same concerns that other weapon types have, there are concerns about effectiveness unless you have it unleashed and ready to use (perhaps less so than a gun, but still).

- - - Updated - - -

As someone who has survived a war. I can tell you one thing, if someone wants you hurt, you'll get hurt.
Out of those things, they can help greatly, or make things even worse. Some will be completely useless. It's very situational.
I'd say the best protection is a hand grenade. And I'm serious about this. I want to see some motherfucked come rape or mug you when you pull that pin out and taunt them to make you release it. But I wouldn't recommend going after that person especially if he/she has a gun

Honestly if someone pulled out a hand grenade I would probably laugh out of the sheer ridiculousness of it.

[Katie N]

I think the nice thing about pepper sprays is that if you're walking alone at night, you can have it in your hand while walking and no one is really going to notice, or mistake you for an attacker. I'm pretty sure walking around carrying a knife will generate some unwanted attention. Having a knife has the same concerns that other weapon types have, there are concerns about effectiveness unless you have it unleashed and ready to use (perhaps less so than a gun, but still).

Kills the point of carrying a knife if you show it to others because then they know you have one and can be prepared for it. If you are going to use one then you can't just pull it out and threaten them with it. If you have one you can't show it to them, they shouldn't know you have one before you cut them or stab them. If you pull it out, you have to attack immediately and cut or stab them when they are not prepared for a knife, no hesitation.

[Celista]

Kills the point of carrying a knife if you show it to others because then they know you have one and can be prepared for it. If you are going to use one then you can't just pull it out and threaten them with it. If you have one you can't show it to them, they shouldn't know you have one before you cut them or stab them. If you pull it out, you have to attack immediately and cut or stab them when they are not prepared for a knife.

The scenario in my mind was when if when you don't have that response time. But yeah, like I said you can't just walk around with a knife in your hand unsheathed.

[Deleted]

My self defense would just be to run away, about the only thing thats legal here

[Celista]

My self defense would just be to run away, about the only thing thats legal here

I'm sorry.

[Deleted]

I picked other: money!

Money is the best way to stay safe and almost never have to go/live anywhere dangerous.

[Deleted]

I picked other: money!

Money is the best way to stay safe and almost never have to go/live anywhere dangerous.

Or on the flip side, having no money, no one will try to mug you then!

[cubby]

You must understand, the way you're talking about guns, is completely unthinkable to anyone not living there. We don't understand how you can think like this. Our impulse IF we were one of the extremely unlucky ones to be home-invaded by actual armed assailants bent on doing us harm, is to CALL THE POLICE, not assassinate them all with the most lethal weapon we can conceive of. Well trained police officers see, can handle the situation a bzillion times better than you, with more intelligent end goals.

The study didn't assume anything about you, it had a hypothesis and gathered data to come to a conclusion, you disagree with the conclusion because "you're a model gun-owner" therefore the system shouldn't change, even if the study proves it isn't serving society well, to hell with society right, it's your personal ability to shoot bad guys that matters.

The United States is just a completely different world than most of western europe, or for that matter, the rest of the civilized world. I just found out that Seattle, if transplanted to Western Europe, would be the second most violent city in Western Europe.

It's not even in the Top 20 in the United States.

I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm just bolstering your very valid point with evidence that the United States has a pro-gun mentality that goes back to our very foundation. And it's horrifying.

[Kolbjorn]

Is there a website that actually rates self-defense products objectively? I think these Amazon reviews are bullshit.

No. But you can find studies that looked at actual real world data.

The studies you want are on sites like pubmed. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/). Also acceptable are various schools of public health (e.g., Harvard). Any site that's pretending to be a newspaper that did some super sneaky reporting... nope. Both the left and the right journalists tend to have biases that make their analyses incorrect (e.g., the right pretends guns are effective for home defense, the left pretends guns are the only problem in the world).

Go directly to the academic/research sites. If you're in a pinch, the FBI crime statistics database might have something. (For example, it's fairly easy to correlate gun ownership to sexual assault rates state by state in the FBI data... I'm not sure if they have other facets.)

[Swalload]

Self defense course. It gives you non-lethal options, and also teaches you how to respond to a variety of situations the right way.

Also you can't get disarmed and shot with your own gun if you kick their ass barehanded.