I got him in the chest, but missed his face. It stopped him and his 'banger buddy from beating another guy, but didn’t stop them from running out of the El car at the next stop and running away. The guy who got bloodied exited the train behind them, and apparently also took off. There was no one around when the police arrived.
So what the hell do I do with that? Well, I guess I got some practice with the mace. If I need to use it again (I hope not), at least I’m pretty sure I won’t miss. If the dumbasses had been blinded even for 10 minutes, the cops would have caught them.
So now I feel angry, they got away with no repercussions, and I feel dumb. The college kids who saw me do it were impressed, so there’s that.
You just need practice. The eastern grip is popular with beginners and is widely used with forehands because of its comfort. The grip can also be used to hit backhands, sweeps and overhead.
To get a proper grip, hold the mace in front of you in your left hand. Rotate the mace so that the face is perpendicular to the ground. Lay the palm of your free hand flat on the face of the mace. Move your palm toward your body, down the shaft until it hits the end of the handle.
Wrap your fingers around the handle and space them slightly apart. Your thumb and forefinger should lie almost directly on top of the handle, forming a V that points toward your right shoulder (toward your left shoulder if you’re left-handed). Your thumb should lie across the top of the handle.
Well, I suppose I can practice my swing with the mace by my front door. I can do that in my living room. The spray mace that I deployed on the train, however, is a bit more difficult to practice with. Can’t do that in my living room! Plus, I’ll run out of it.
I don’t sign in to straightdope at work but I do read it there and all day long I’ve been singing “I maced a guy, but I missed hiiiiim!” Sung to I kissed a girl.
It’s pepper gel, by Mace company. This stuff. The stream was narrower than I expected, and I had to push the button harder than I thought, so the stream stopped before I could adjust it up to his face. By then he had stopped hitting the other guy (new attention on me), but wasn’t attacking me or anyone and I felt weird spraying him with it again for no continued reason. Then the doors opened and the gang booked out of there.
Why the heck don’t they just make the bottle more like one that average people use every day? Like aerosol hairspray? Macing someone is not something people should have to practice.
Aquanet comes with a cap. What about a mace cap, with a plastic ring that attaches it to the bottle? So you can pop it off quickly and not worry about losing it.
Actually, if your purse is big enough, a blast to the face from a can of AquaNet can leave them coughing and heaving long enough for you to GTFO. It’s also legal pretty much anywhere to my knowledge.
After the research I did and checking different manufacturers and watching videos, I think I understand pretty well why Mace makes the sprays it does, and the different canisters they use to hold them.
It’s extremely important that you are able to grab the container from your bag/purse/pocket without looking at it, and be able to orient it in your hand without looking at it. The idea is it comes out of concealment ready to go. Holding the canister properly, you have it held in your fist, with your thumb on top, ready to press the button. There’s a flip-top portion that’s on a spring hinge, which protects the spray from accidentally discharging, and you wedge your thumb underneath it to press the button.
If the thing had a cap that you had to flip off, you may need two hands to do that, and even if you could do it with one hand, which direction is the button pointing once the cap is off? If it had a sprayer like an Aquanet can, you could just as easily spray yourself in the face. Hilarity would ensue. Not really.
The stuff I have produces a “stream” that reaches up to 18 feet. (The link provided is safe) The guy I sprayed was about 12 feet away. There are other sprays that produce a “fog” - those reach about 8 feet. The reason I chose what I did was because I figured it was just as likely I would need to use it on a bus or train as I would on the street. The longer-reaching stream is more contained and less likely to hit other passengers (note I still hit who I wanted to, just not as high because I didn’t raise my arm high enough). It’s a gel, rather than an aerosol type spray, so it’s heavier and falls to the floor/street in a stream pattern (like if you had a wet rope laid along a sidewalk, picked it up in the middle and dropped it). So at the distance I sprayed it, it made an arc, and it arced downward sooner than I expected, therefore hitting him in the chest rather than the face. Instructions also recommend starting with aiming for the torso, then moving up, which I was in the middle of when the stream quit, because I wasn’t pressing the trigger hard enough.
Mace recommends doing a couple of practice squirts in a safe place, and I did, but I realize after the fact that I wasn’t actually trying to hit a target when I practiced, and I didn’t want to waste too much because it’s not cheap and I didn’t want the canister to run out if I really needed it. I did carry the thing for about 2 years before needing it. I have another one on order right now. I plan to discharge the rest of the old one for practice once the new one is in my bag.
You said you bought the can that produces a spray as opposed to a fog because you didn’t want to hit anyone besides your target: With the spray did anyone else (including you) besides the target wind up coughing and tearing up?
It’s also legal pretty much anywhere to my knowledge.
