Less-than-Lethal Protection
This content has been archived. It may no longer be relevant
With traveling, you never know where you are going to end up. We’ve inadvertently found ourselves staying in some sketchy places overnight.
We’ve never needed any means of protection, and hopefully never will, but we found a an interesting solution should we need it. In an RV you always have kitchen knives, and as part of our camping/prep equipment have a hunting knife and crossbow. But none of that is really practical for Kelly to wield in an emergency situation, nor would I want her to. I’m not paranoid enough to even keep the crossbow in the living quarters, it is just an interesting “toy” and might be used if I decide to go hunting one of these days and is pulled from basement storage for target practice on occasion. We’ve discussed carrying a pistol in the RV, but don’t want to worry about varying state laws and such.
I ran across an ad the other day for some less-than-lethal protection rounds for paintball guns, and found the idea interesting. Looking further into it, you can buy paintballs that are filled with various grades of pepper spray. When they hit a surface they explode into a cloud of pepper spray that causes irritation and temporary respiratory distress for anyone in the immediate area. They also have hard rubber, once again less-than-lethal self defense rounds, and are mostly unregulated.
I ended up ordering a couple tubes of ten of the pepper spray balls, in two different grades. And a 100 pack of the rubber rounds. To shoot them, I ordered a Tippman TiPX pistol that uses 12g CO2 cartridges for propellant. I bought a few extra magazines for it to fill with each of the rounds, as well as one with alternating rubber and pepper balls, to be kept in the gun. It’s a massive beast of a pistol, with a .68cal barrel, the air cartridge just underneath it, and a seven round magazine in the grip.
It seems like these should be marketed more heavily than they are, as they seem like a real alternative to munitions for people who only buy guns for self defense.
As an aside, I’ve never really given Paintball a serious look before. Some of the equipment gets way out there, and it looks like a fun but expensive sport to take up. This will be fun to get some normal paintball rounds for, and may see more use than gathering dust in a drawer.
