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Ladies Weapon? Your Sure-fire Solution To Violence

Carry a ladies weapon for THE most effective solution to violence. Don’t let him hurt you. Learn how you can be prepared and confident in any situation.

You may not (yet) be ready or willing to carry a gun or a knife around to protect yourself from criminals (if you are willing, find out more about the different kinds of Self Defense Weapons you can carry). However, I would suggest that you don't dismiss the idea altogether.

You may just require a bit of time, more knowledge or a bit more experience before you are ready to make that change. I took quite a while before I decided it was time to start carrying knives.

It certainly took a good amount of thinking and reading before I became comfortable with the idea. It's not that there is something wrong with carrying a weapon (obviously), but it does require a mental shift or adjustment, especially if you are new to self defense and the idea of using weapons to protect yourself.

In the long run (if your country allows you to legally carry a knife or gun for personal defense) these tools are the MOST effective way to protect yourself from violent crime.

Ladies weapons (and any other weapons for that matter) are known as "equalizers". In other words, they "equalize" the difference in strength or skill between you and your attacker. They put you on a level playing field or in many cases, actually give you the advantage over your attacker.

As mentioned in my Self Defense For Women article, you, as a woman have to find ways to overcome your lack of upper body strength as compared to a male attacker (don't hate me for saying so, it's simply biology!).

Whether the ladies weapon you choose to carry and train with is a gun, knife, pepper spray, or a metal flashlight, having one and being ready and willing to use it will give you a much better chance of defeating a stronger attacker.

There are other weapons that a you can carry for self defense if you are not (yet) willing to consider knives or guns. I'll be talking about 2 great alternatives:

• Pepper Spray
• Tactical Flashlights
  

Pepper Spray: An Underrated Ladies Weapon

Pepper spray (sometimes called OC spray or Tear gas) is a fantastic ladies weapon. It has the advantages of being:

• Light and small
• Easily carried clipped to a pocket or onto clothing
• Non-lethal (will not kill or permanently injure an attacker)
• Very effective (up to 80% of attackers will be stopped by it)
• Can be carried in the hand while walking around
  

The only downsides it has are that it may:

• Not have any effect on some attackers (if they are drunk or high on drugs)
• Be blown in the wrong direction if there is wind
• Affect YOU if some of it blows back into your face

It's important to understand these pros and cons so that you know how this ladies weapon can help you stay safe in public.

The most important things to remember are to:

• Always carry it in a place where you can grab as quickly as possible (Meaning in less than 1 second if you can!)
• Practice aiming it and actually spraying it before you carry it

Pepper spray will be of no use to you if you can't get to it in time, so clip it to your clothing rather than carrying it in a bag, if possible. You also need to ensure that you've practiced unlocking or disengaging the safety lock (if it has one). This is easy to do, you just want to make sure you know how it works on YOUR brand of pepper spray before you need to use it for real.

Check to see exactly WHERE the spray comes out of the can. Some models spray out the top of the can, although most spray out the front (See image below of spray can in hand).

Be sure to actually give it a short 1-second spray in a safe direction in your garden or somewhere outdoors at least once. This will let you see what the spray looks like and also how far it sprays.

You may actually hesitate to use it on an attacker if you've never done it before. You will be MUCH more comfortable and confident with this effective weapon if you've tried it in the safety of your own property with no pressure to perform (like you'll have when you are under attack!).

Get A High Quality Brand Of Pepper Spray

Unfortunately, there are many companies out there that sell poor quality pepper spray products. Either the actual spray formula is too weak (so it will not really affect your attacker), or the spray can is of poor quality.

If it's badly made, it may:

• Accidentally go off in your pocket (really!)
  
• Be difficult or impossible to use when you need it most (faulty spray button or safety switch)
  
• Not spray far enough to reach your attacker (some are really pathetic in this sense)
  

High quality brands of pepper spray may be a bit more expensive, but the fact that you can actually rely on them to work when you need them most is worth the extra money.

The following brands of pepper spray are highly thought of in the self protection community and can really be trusted.

* I personally carry the SWAT brand listed below every day and have given myself a small whiff of it before (just to test it). Let me tell you, I was coughing, gasping and unable to see properly for about 30 minutes afterwards! And I didn't even have it sprayed directly into my face (I just sprayed it in the air and walked through the cloud of spray quickly). This stuff is POWERFUL!

The brands that I recommend are:

• Sabre Red (http://www.sabrered.com)
• SWAT (South African brand) - Local reseller - HMSecurity Website
• Fox Labs (http://www.foxlabs.com)
  

The Tactical Flashlight: A Ladies Weapon For The Night Hours

Another extremely useful tool that everyone (not only women) should carry with them daily, is a tactical flashlight.

The reasons for carrying one of these compact, convenient ladies weapons are that they:

• Can be used as a weapon (to strike an attacker)
• Are lightweight and small - this makes them easy to carry
• Are extremely bright
• Take away darkness at the push of a button!

Some of you may wonder why on earth you would want to carry a flashlight, of all things!

Like pepper spray, a flashlight is a tool that can help you, as a woman, to fight off a larger, stronger male attacker. Tactical flashlights are usually made of aluminum and really pack a punch when used as a weapon.

The way you naturally hold a flashlight in your hand will leave one of the hard metal ends sticking out of the bottom of your fist. If you're ever attacked, you can use a "hammer fist" strike (imagine banging a table top with the meaty part at the bottom of your fist) to hit your attacker on the head, face or arms.

You'll be able to hit MUCH harder than you could without the flashlight in your hand.

The metal end of the light will also do much more damage to the criminal than you could do with your fist alone. If you hit him with enough "enthusiasm", he should stop attacking you.

I say "should", because there are no guarantees in violent situations.

Some people (especially the kind of "people" who attack others, i.e. criminals) are extremely tough and may not simply run away at the first sign of resistance from you!

It will be up to you to FIGHT him off with the help of the hard metal light sticking out of your fist.

The other use of this ladies weapon is to flash it into your attacker's eyes right before he reaches you. While this action alone is unlikely to injure or stop him, it will usually be enough to distract him or blind him for a second or two (like I said before, these little things are seriously bright).

This could give you a chance to escape (run away) or get closer to him and bash him in the head with the light! Once he is down on the ground and in pain, THEN you run to safety.

Tactical Flashlights Also Scare Away Darkness!

A far more common use of your flashlight will simply be to take away that pesky thing called "darkness" while you are walking around at night.

As much as the experts would recommend you DON'T walk around after dark for safety reasons, I know many people have a jobs that keep them out until well after dark. If you've ever needed to cross a dark parking lot to get back to your car after an evening at a nightclub or restaurant, you'll appreciate how useful a nice, bright flashlight could be.

You can have it in your hand as you exit the building you were in and be ready to use if you are attacked. You can also shine the light into any dark corners where an attacker may be hiding (between parked cars or down dark alleyways, for example).

This is where having a sharp sense of awareness of your surroundings comes in again.

In order to be aware of what is around you, you need to be able to SEE! With a flashlight, any dark corner or area between two cars can instantly be flooded with bright, white light. There will no longer be any places where criminals can easily hide from you.

Fortunately, there are many high quality brands of tactical flashlights out there that have all the characteristics that make them a perfect ladies weapon.

Surefire Tactical Lights

The original pioneer in this area of small, super bright lights is Surefire. They sell a really large range of very high quality lights. They are a bit pricy but well worth the money, in my opinion. In fact, my very first tactical light was a Surefire E2E "Executive Elite" (Image above). This little light was a great companion and I carried it throughout my time at university - 5 years (I say "was" because it was stolen, along with my laptop, out of my car boot one day a few years ago. Such is life in crime ridden South Africa!).

Fenix Lights

Another company that makes slightly more affordable lights, is Fenix. These are also excellent, high quality lights. Fenix has a fantastic range of lights to suit anyone’s needs. They have models that work with regular AA or the smaller AAA batteries, as well as more powerful ones that use special lithium batteries (that are more expensive, but last longer).

I highly recommend you head over to a security store or gun store in your area to handle a few lights and choose one that feels right for you. Remember that you'll want one that feels good in YOUR hand (the right length and thickness). You should also take special note of the weight of the light.

You probably don't want to get a heavy light, since you'll be carrying it with you every day. Having said that, it should have a BIT of weight to make your strikes more effective. If it's too lightweight, you may not be able to injure an attacker easily. Remember, the quicker you can injure him, the quicker you'll be able to escape to a place of safety.

If you prefer to shop online, you can go directly to their company websites:

• http://www.surefire.com/
• http://www.fenixlight.com/
  

I've personally bought lights from both these websites and I can recommend them wholeheartedly. The process was easy and the lights were delivered to me quite quickly, even though these are American based companies and I'm all the way in South Africa.

These Two Simple Ladies Weapons Could Save Your Life

They really could! But only if you commit to carrying one (or both) of them with you every day. You never know when you might be attacked by a criminal. If we were lucky enough to be able to know ahead of time when we'd become a victim, we just wouldn't get out of bed that day! But, sadly life isn't like that.

There's also no reason why you can't carry a more effective ladies weapon like a nice sharp folding knife (my Benchmade knife in the first picture at the beginning of this article is a great example) or a compact handgun.

Regardless of what you decide to trust your safety to, make sure you don't make the mistake of leaving it at home next to your bed on the very day that a mugger decides to pounce on you!

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