On using your flashlight as a weapon, can I extend and elaborate on my earlier post on this subject:

"All it takes is an attitude of aggression, and the will to beat your opponent. Since they're out to rape, rob or kill you, hopefully you have the will to end their efforts."

I learned my first self-defense lesson from a girl in college, call her 'Darcy.' Darcy was a student at a nearby college, I was a student working whatever hours I could get at the local hospital, this one a 4-midnight shift as assistant in the ER. The police brought in an assailant in custody, with contusions to his right eye, his cheek, and possible skull and facial fractures, he had a concussion. His eye was bloody and pushed around in the socket and I remember thinking, whoa, that's really messed up. It had taken several direct hits with the heft of a flashlight. Darcy also came in, with a cut to her face and she had been hit to her head, bluing her eye. The assailant was on a gurney, Darcy came in under her own power. It was obvious who had won the encounter. The idea of a personal assault on a stranger was big news in this rural county, there were about 6 on duty cops moving around the ER. I assisted the nurse and doctor while they cleaned up Darcy, and was asked to stay with her around the cops, get her water etc. Some of them actually thought Darcy must have been the aggressor, the assailant was so badly beaten up, I remember someone mumbling about the colleges bring their problems into the town. The truth was Darcy was walking home from the library, along a dark street, and the assailant came from behind with a knife and started to pull her into the bushes. She reacted as she had been trained, with aggression - she reached back and grabbed his hair, and began striking him as hard as she could with the butt and lighted end of her flashlight around his face and eyes, which caused him to let go of her and drop his knife. She didn't stop hitting until he hit the ground, then she ran and called for help. She was still calming down from the event, her adrenaline turning back from aggression to weak-kneed shock at what she had done, she started to cry a bit. She said she was sorry that she was walking alone in the dark, but the town was such a generally safe place, that really shook her up. She told me the other thing she hadn't done right was she hadn't crippled his knee like her Dad had taught in self-defense class. But she done good obviously. And her little c battery plastic flashlight inflicted a whole lotta damage.

The good thing I did later was to take a similar self-defense class, which was made up mostly of women, most of whom had an assault in their past. My buddies actually ribbed me for attending what they thought was a girls class, they couldn't imagine the aggression that can get stirred up in a fight for one's life. It doesn't matter if you're male or female though, violence will hit anybody.