pepper spray yourself

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mr_dove

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Who has experience with pepper spraying themselves either by accident or as part of training?

I'm just a civilian but I'm considering Pepper spray for situations where lethal force is not justified.

I'd like to have some experience with it before I begin carrying (i.e. getting sprayed). I hear that you always get "some" in the eyes when using it against someone else and I'd rather have experience with that pain than to have it for the first time in an emergency.

Are there any safety precautions that need to be taken when doing something like this? Are there any serious dangers? Is is better to start with an indirect mist of a small amount or just go for a full blast in the face?

I don't want to do anything stupid if this is a bad idea. All types of law enforcement and military go through it though. It couldn't be that dangerous.
 
I've never deliberately sprayed it directly into my face, but if you're spraying it, inevitably you'll end up breathing it.

Occasionally I'll just pick up some to try out, I always end up coughing and tearing up.

Buy 2 of whatever you choose, and try one of them. Examine how far it shoots, whether stream or mist type of dispersion. Spray some onto a wall and walk towards where you sprayed...you'll know it when you breath some in.

Basically know what to expect if you have to use the other one for a real encounter.

Best of Luck.

Ed
 
Do not do it if you have any kind of respiratory problems. If you are fairly young and healthy it probably won't be a problem. If I was going to do it, I would stand in the shower, have someone spray me, then turn on the water.

I have never been sprayed with pepper spray. But, I have been in close contact with lots of people who have been pepper sprayed. I have also been through the Army "Gas Chamber" a half dozen times or so as well as having CS grenades thrown near me and I was standing in a white cloud. It isn't much fun, but it also isn't the end of the world.
 
I was sprayed as part of my last job (Texas Youth Commission). Definitely a shock at first, but I was still able to retrieve a set of handcuffs & cuff my instructor. And I remained pretty calm during the exercise. I can't imagine the stuff slowing me down if enraged or doped up...:what:

It's great on animals though. I keep it around for dogs & other varmints. And it's a good distraction device. But I'm not confident enough in it to stake my life on it...:uhoh:
 
I'm considering Pepper spray for situations where lethal force is not justified.
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I only use condiments on food.

I'm sure that some people trust their lives to condiment spray, I'm just not one of them.


The swine* that make law and policy for King County WA feel that the lives of repeat drug/assault offender dirtbags are more important than the lives of the men and women brave enough to be part of the "Thin Blue Line". They force their officers to employ pepper spray in situations where mozambiques would be far, far more effective/appropriate.



16311.jpg



Deputy Sheriff Richard Anthony Herzog
King County Sheriff's Department, WA
End of Watch: Saturday, June 22, 2002
Incident Details
Cause of Death: Gunfire
Date of Incident: Saturday, June 22, 2002
Weapon Used: Officer's handgun
Suspect Info: Apprehended
Deputy Herzog was shot and killed with his own service weapon after responding to a call at 1700 hours involving a naked man creating a disturbance in the roadway on Coal Creek Parkway. When Deputy Herzog, who was wearing a vest, arrived on scene, he attempted to subdue the man with pepper spray. The spray had no affect on the man, who then attacked Deputy Herzog. Deputy Herzog's service weapon, a .40 caliber Glock, was knocked to the ground and the magazine came out of it.

The suspect picked up the weapon and replaced the magazine. As Deputy Herzog attempted to retreat, the suspect shot him once, knocking him to the ground. The suspect then stood over him and shot him ten more times before fleeing to a nearby apartment. The man was apprehended approximately 45 minutes later**. The suspect had been released from jail only 11 days earlier after serving several months for assaulting a police officer.

Deputy Herzog had been with the King County Sheriff's Department for seven years and had spent the past four years working in the City of Newcastle, which contracted with the sheriff's department for police coverage. He was a US Army veteran and is survived by his wife and two teenage daughters.
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Deputy Herzog died with an empty condiment spray-can by his side, and with his own bullets in his head.

If I'm placed in a bad situation where a firearm or other means of deadly force is deemed inappropriate, I will endeavor to withdraw. Failing that, I will not hesitate to make plain my intention to employ lethal force. Should that be ignored, may God have mercy on that person's soul.


*County Councilmen, and their attack dogs the black-robed liberal vermin that crucify cops who shoot drug addled psychotics.

** Unbelievably, the King County cops nearly lost more police officers in the effort to bring this POS in alive. He stood naked and ranting on an exterior balcony on his daughter's apartment building while the police swarmed him time and time again in order to bring him down. His crack induced psychosis made him more powerful than at least 3 ordinary men.

Call me a knuckle-dragger, but I swear before God as my supreme judge that I would have made every effort to splash that piece of inhuman refuse across the side of that building with every shell in my shotgun had I been there. I have NFI how police officers can withstand that sort of abuse and disdain for their lives from the very people that they work for. It boggles my mind.

Sorry for the rant, I really didn't mean to hijack your thread, but everytime I even hear or see the words pepper spray, I am haunted again by the death of Deputy Herzog. :(
 
I've had one dischange in my pocket. My thigh burned like heck for 45 minutes. This was with one of the no-name brands from Cheaper than Dirt. I later did the same thing with Fox Labs pepper spray. It didn't hurt as much, so I went back to the no-name stuff.

I asked a local LEO what he thought about pepper spray. He called it "Karate in a Can." It's non-lethal and makes the cop's job a lot easier when he arrives. He has had it fail on two people: both Mexican. Some people are just used to it.
 
I've been sprayed with pepper spray. It sucked, but I couldn't say it would stop me from finishing whatever I started. CS on the other hand, pretty much takes me out of the fight.
 
Is that really relevant?
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They do eat a lot more spicy food than your average gringo: thus their immunity to the pepper spray.

I spoke to a California police officer who said that his Mexican partner would sometimes put pepper spray on his lunch. I wouldn't expect it to work on him either.
 
Is that really relevant?

I knew what you were getting at, and you might be on to something there. I used to go to a sushi restruant all the time that had what they called a nuclear firecracker roll. I have gone there several times and my friends ordered them and I went along with it. Every time it took ME out of the fight. I couldn't speak, I had tears running down my face, my nose was running. I mean, I was really in distress. Not all that much different than the effects of pepper spray. After all, pepper spray is made with some oil from peppers isn't it ? When you ordered one of these rolls, the sushi chef would get a crap eating grin on his face and watch you eat it. He got a big kick out of making you suffer. One night a bunch of couples went there including a friend of mine and his wife. They are Mexican and my friend actually came from Mexico. They both ordered a firecracker roll and specified that they wanted it as hot as was possible. The chef got the grin on his face. They were both in coversation when he handed them the rolls. They both ate them and never made any indication that it was hot. They kept right on talking and laughing like they just ate a bowl of ice cream. The chef was crestfallen. You could see it on his face.

I have seen a lot of people who seemed uneffected by pepper spray. I have seen police officers pepper spray people and the person sprayed stayed just as combative but the officer was out of the fight. I also wouldn't trust it on animals. I have told the story a number of times on here about the mailman pepper spraying my Rottweiler. The dog sat there and didn't bat an eye. He was totally uneffected by it. He immediately afterwards went on a four or five mile walk with me and made no indication that anything was out of the ordinary.
 
I picked up a can of mace from the local police surplus store. Sprayed it all over a friend's car as a prank. It was terribly disappointing. It smelled terrible, and made us breathe heavily, but we were otherwise fine.

We went back for another can, to experiment with. My friend sprayed his neck and upper chest with it quite heavily. I hosed my hands down with the stuff, and held them over my face. We both reacted about the same: burning skin where the spray touched, heavy and difficult breathing, teary eyes and runny nose. We were otherwise unaffected. We definitely weren't incapacitated, though it probably could have slowed us down a bit. Showering alleviated the heavy breathing, but the burning skin and runny nose/eyes persisted a while.

Neither me nor my friend consider the stuff to be worth a darn as a defense weapon. Granted, neither of us took any in the eyes, nose or mouth, where it's supposed to do the most damage, but still... The stuff was unplesant, but not debilitating. No worse than a really potent plate of Thai food.
 
i have had one incounter with mace, and with no direct contact to me...i coughed and retched uncontrollably....

but all of that said....I would rather use a gun to defend myself.
 
In my slightly misguided highschool days, I sprayed some on a wall indoors.

A girl that I was friends with had a can of OC spray on her keychain. We were talking in the hallway/stairwell just before classes were letting out for the day. I asked to see her keys and she let me. I asked her if I could spray some on the wall and she said ok. (She was a punky chick.)

I gave the wall a 1/2 second blast (stream really) and stepped back to see if the paint peeled. About this time, the bell rang and everyone came rushing out. As soon as this happened and the air started swirling around, everyone (probably 50-100 students in the area including myself and the girl) was coughing and rubbing their eyes. That is the closest I have come to spraying myself.

Fast forward a few years. I was at a party that was crashed by the campus PD. A few drunken fratboys decided it would be a good idea to argue with the cops, (there were 2 there)and ended up shoving one of the cops back hard enough to knock him down. At that point, the other cop let loose with the pepper spray, pretty much gassing everyone within spitting distance (good call if you ask me, it was getting pretty hairy).

Within a second or two, several (5-10) guys and girls were on their knees hollering and rubbing their eyes and some of them were puking. One idiot though, was still up, trying to fight with the cops. Of course they finally cuffed him along with several others and hauled them off yelling and whimpering. I was on my way out by this time.

This showed me one thing about spray. It is useful to a point, but it does not work one everyone. If the guy that was fighting the cops had a weapon, the cops might have been in trouble.

It is a viable force option though.

YMMV
 
" I sprayed some on a wall indoors. "

Today, this would be at best a full scale hazardous materials incident and at worst an act of domestic terrorism.
 
First, 444, I think three or four of my last posts have immediately followed one of yours; just want you to know I'm not trying to make this happen. We must just have similar interests (well, except for flashlights :)).

Second, understand that there is pepper spray and there is PEPPER SPRAY. The two are not the same. The pepper stuff is rated in SHU (or something like that, I think it's Scoville Heat Units), and while many manufacturers will tell you what concentration of pepper they use (e.g., 10%), they neglect to mention what pepper they are using in the first place. It makes a big difference. My understanding is that the good, strong pepper spray is significantly more effective than either the weak stuff or "tear gas."

So, while I've never sprayed myself (or anyone else), I think you have two choices: (1) spend some time researching and comparing the "strength" of the different sprays and what that actually means, or (2) buy some of the "bear spray" that tends to use the best stuff. I recall that there are two companies that make the "good" bear stuff. One is Counter Assault, and I can't remember the name of the other. Be aware that the bear spray comes in much bigger canisters than the thumb-sized stuff you typically see, so you'll have to weigh the size factor along with everything else.
 
Managed to spray myself with 10% foam a while back while fighting a mental patient. It sucked a lot, but the pain didn;t really hit till after we were done fighting. Here is the thing with pepper spray (from my limited experience) sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It is a tool and provides another option, but never expect it to be 100 percent effective. If you are going to carry it, you need to be sprayed with it so you will understand its effects and limitations. In 6 years I've been sprayed full on probably 6 times (including academy) and been caught in the back wash more times than I can count. The more often you expeirience it the easier it is to work through it. IT still hurts, but you know it won't kill you and you can deal with it. We have a theory here that spray is probably 80% effective on the general public but 100% effective on Police officers sprayed by their partners during a fight.

Incidently Fox 5.3 is the closest thing I have ever seen to hell in a can. That mess will shut me down completely. Plus it has a much quicker onset of heat than anything else I've seen. The MACE we carry takes 3-5 seconds to heat up. The FOX seems nearly instant. I highly recomend it if you have the option. As a final note, if you spray someone and the situation permits give it a couple of seconds and assess the effects before deciding it was ineffective and going hands on. I've seen many a combative drunk decide to comply with me after all once the spray kicks in.
 
My 18 year old daughter told me last night that one of her male friends saw her spraycan on her key chain and asked if he could try it. He proceeded to shoot himself in the chest,OOPS,shot himself in the face.She spent next ten minutes calming him down and washing his eyes out in the sink.She wants to get heer carry permit as soon as she can.She said she didn't think it would stop someone with "hard intentions".
 
My sister doesn't carry pepper stray because she says her moron guy friends would get a hold of it and spend all night macing each other.
 
I'm in northern california, pretty windy here so the Fox Foam works great for close encounters but the fox 4ox stream works good too if the perp is at a distance.

Fox is the best stuff, I once applied it to a perp intoxicated in front of my house. The guy went on his knees instantly and I caught a gust of it but I always carry sudecon wipes so I wiped myself and I was allright after coughing a bit.
 
This is an addendum to Clubsoda22:

Alegedley 16 million scoville units is pure capsaicin. If Vexor is really that hot, that about as good as you are going to get.

There is a "food product" called "Da' Bomb". And it's advertised as the hottest pepper sauce on the market. It has a rating of 1.5 million scoville units. I ordered it mainly for gags and stupid kids.

This stuff is hot, but not enough to be debilitating. I can take a drop or two straight in my mouth. Hurts like heck, but if a guy hit me with the stuff, more likely than not it would just get me P.O. 'ed.

Vexor may be a different story. I'll have to look into that product. But my guess is most are not that effective. Especially after visiting zarc.com, and their faq claims that all other pepper sprays are between 500,000 and 2 million scoville units. And looking further into the faq there seems to be some literary slight of hand:

Source: http://www.zarc.com/english/vexor/faq.html

"How much capsaicin is in VEXOR?

VEXOR contains 1.45% pure and natural capsaicinoids derived from chili peppers.

Capsaicinoids are the only ingredients in OC or chili pepper that cause a burning
sensation and inflammation of mucous membranes." End quote.

So it appears that it is nearly pure, but diluted. It goes on further to mention that Vexor causes a reaction much faster. And how it does that. But either I'm not smart enough to understand what they are saying. They are "selling" themselves. Or I'm too tired to care, since it's waaay past my bedtime.

What would help is if someone could verify whether or not the ceiling for pure capsaicin is really 16 million scoville units. A few of my sources:

http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/generic/3813/

( ^ One of my favorite sites, BTW)

http://www.fiery-foods.com/dave/capsaicin.asp
 
The problem with equating hot food with pepper spray is that putting any of this stuff in your eyes or nose is FAR, FAR worse than eating it.

I can eat a whole jalepeno without flinching but change my contacts after dicing some and I'm in some serious pain.

I have some insane hot sauce and I've read horror stories of guys taking a whiz after handling the stuff and they wish they were dead.

Check out this site. They have some mean hot sauces. The hottest is 7.1 Million Scoville Units. Da Bomb is listed there too. Right at 1.5M
 
Hi mr_dove,

I, um, have put Da Bomb in my nose and eyes. It was painful, but still not enough to debilitate me. In fact I played foosball with a friend until it wore off. An hour and a half maybe? I got it in my eyes and nose accidentally, so it wasn't much. It may be that these pepper spray companies also make up by sheer volume of spray. But the ones I got on me weren't that bad.

P.S. Can you post the link to the 7M scoville pepper sauce? I gotta add it to my collection.


P.P.S jkominek,

Thanks for the cross references, stupid me. I should have thought to check Wiki. That pretty much verifies that it looks like 16M scoville is pure capsaicin. Anybody up for a new test? That is if I can find pure capsaicin? The link I post in my previous post indicates it would take quite a bit to kill a human...several grams I think.
 
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