Well, all I have to say is, in your state, does the public and the police carry two different types of mace, i.e., self-defense spray? If they do, you’ve proven my point .
And to answer someone’s question, in my state most self-defense sprays are pepper sprays. Last that I heard, the police carry an amalgam of pepper and tear gas sprays. Which is why theirs is so effective. That is what the reporter said, in the case I cited. He even let a cop spray him with one. And it didn’t seem to be too pleasant of an experience, I can tell you.
Actually, no. The active ingredient can become intensified in the carrier (water or an oil base). The problem with old OC spray is the propellant can weaken making them inoperable and useless.
It always depends on the jurisdiction. Tear gas is not legal for non-LEOs here in Wisconsin but may be in other states.
When I first got on the job in ‘82 only postal carriers had pepper spray (Halt) for animal attacks. We had a tear gas spray (don’t remember if it was CS or CN) that came in the same type dispenser as OC. But you didn’t spray a subject in the face, you sprayed them in the chest and it dispersed upwards to the mouth, nose and eyes.
Having sprayed people with both I can attest OC is more effective.
And the OP is full of beans. There are plenty of over the counter sprays that are very effective. Keep your eye on the Scoville Heat Units, not the percentage. You want at least 1 million, 2 million is better. Get sprayed with a dose of Fox Labs 3 million and tell me OTC spray doesn’t work. When you’re done screaming that is!
I don’t know any department around here that carries the teargas blend. Some studies came out decades ago that they can cause facial nerve damage which is why so many went to pepper based products.
How about giving the call letters of the TV station so that we can do the 30 seconds of googling that you could have done to 99% likely find the video on the station’s web site or on Youtube?
So, your research on the topic which you felt compelled to start here, now, is a segment on your local TV news which you believe that you “remember exactly”, from twenty years ago?
I don’t think life has changed that much in twenty years, especially in regards to self-defense sprays. And as someone already pointed out, this is just MPSIMS .
are just about the definition of “I don’t have a cite”. It’s the equivalent of citing a “friend of a friend”. It might be true, but it’s not a cite and most people aren’t going to accept it proof.
PK has mentioned in an unrelated comment that pepper spray has gotten better over time.
Also, it can be purchased in a variety of percentages. What percentage of OC did the person in the news report get sprayed with? Have the laws regarding strength changed since 2002?
California is the only state where expandable batons are illegal to both own and carry. In Massachusetts, New York, and Washington D.C. batons are illegal to carry, but legal to own for home use. There are no federal laws against carrying expandable batons.
Questionable Content (which takes place in Massachusetts) did this:
Please see the never-ending “Alternate Ending to ‘Big’?” thread for more on how the passage of time can mess with memories, even memories that people are absolutely bloody certain are accurate. I’m sorry, but even if you think you remember well a twenty-year-old clip from a random TV newscast, you may not, in fact, remember all the details.
It’s not that people don’t necessarily believe you saw it on TV, it’s that (as I figure you are well aware by this point) the standard for proof on the SDMB is typically that you provide actual links to the information that you have seen or read, if at all possible.
In retrospect, given what your “evidence” is, it probably would have been better to title your thread “Do OTC Self-Defense Sprays Work?”, and word your OP like, “I remember seeing on TV, years ago…was that accurate? Have things changed since then?”
Instead, you worded your OP as a flat-out statement:
Jim, as long as you’ve been on here, how is it you’re still resisting even a few minutes of simple research? You recall clear as day (you think) something from an entire generation ago but don’t do even a quick Google search? You want us to accept that your memory is pristine and that your (old) sources are unimpeachable? And when we don’t–because this is the Straight Dope–you go to accusations that we think we’re lying? Oy.
Hey, I saw back in the day that wearing a copper bracelet is effective against arthritis. I did, really! I can even tell you where: it was a copy of Grit (then a weekly newspaper) at my grandparents-in-law’s house. If you tell me it doesn’t, does that make me a liar, or just someone foolish enough and stubborn enough to insist that something I read a long time ago must have been true and hasn’t been disproven since?
Of course I don’t believe copper bracelets banish arthritis because even back then, I doubted it, but I just now spent–I timed it–14 seconds to do more research and read the pertinent part of this article proving they don’t. See? Easy. Do your research.
And FYI, MPSIMS does not mean posts that aren’t recently researched and evidence-based won’t be doubted.
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