Er... "noise maker"?
Quote:
If you are within reach of an assailant then evasion has been eliminated so defense is the appropriate response.
If you've never heard one of these, rest assured they are quite "devensive" little weapons and not merely a personal "car alarm".

I was quite young and accompanying my Mother shopping in a woman's boutique. I picked up a small device about the size of a thin lipstick. It was gold and shiny and looked like a perfume sprayer to my uneducated eyes. I pressed the top to see if it had any perfume and to find out what it might smell like...

Pain cut my investigation short and caused me to jerk, tensing my entire body into a standing semi-fetal position and slamming my eyes shut involuntarily.

After managing to open my eyes, I looked around to find out what had happened. I was not the only person with their eyes shut & face scrunched up in a grimace of pain; everyone close to me had obviously felt something unpleasant also. The entire store was frozen; no one moved at all. But the ladies farther away all were looking at me.

It finally dawned on me that what I had in my hand was not a cosmetic appliance but a weapon. I spoke up, "Did I do that?", except that I couldn't hear my voice as I spoke. That freaked me out pretty bad. I had figured out what had happened, but I had never actually "heard" the sonic blast, and now I couldn't even hear my own voice. What freaked me out even worse was when my Mother spoke to me and I couldn't hear her either. I was temporarily deaf.

I was holding it at arm's length when it went off. My hearing eventually returned. I wonder how much more it would have hurt/incapacitated me if it had been at the side of my head when I did it.

But to answer your question Liz, I don't know why I don't carry one. Prejudice, maybe? For some reason, I have sound stun devices in a category with electrical stun devices. Blasting someone in their ear or pressing electrodes into their body... they're both just a bit too "close quarters" for my comfort. For my self defense, I want something that can give me at least a little distance, like a pepper spray (or a lot of distance, like a gun).

Stay safe,
J.T.