ive said it before and i’ll say it again but carrying a weapon does not make you safer, it gives the person assaulting you a free weapon. i know we live in a time where fear is profitable and the cute pink stun guns make feminism sexy but they do not work like you think they do.
there is an extremely slim chance you will be able to deploy the pepper spray/taser/gun in a way that does not harm you at all. pepper spray blows back, guns miss, tasers slip. there is a much much larger chance things go poorly and you end up getting hurt worse than originally intended because now your assailant is pissed and more heavily armed.
im not talking out my ass here, i’m a case manager at a homeless shelter for addicts. we have a lot of violent behavior. none of our staff carry any sort of weapons. we are trained to de-escalate or remove ourselves from the situation. i have worked there over two years without being harmed despite intervening in many fights and having weapons pulled on me.
there is safety in numbers. there is safety in well lit streets and staying on your phone and knowing when to scream and run. there is no safety in “personal defense items”.
more people carrying weapons makes more violence
it’s an illusion. it’s a mental game. a weapon is a safety blanket that will sooner kill you than stop someone else from doing so.
we are also not in PVP grand theft auto. as scary as things seem, humans are not out there re-enacting the purge 24/7. there are lots of people who benefit from you being afraid of everyone you pass on the street. a lot of those people will try to sell you things to keep you safe. don’t fall for it.
#save#reading#it doesn’t feel great to think about how self-defense weapons are completely illegal in australia#but it might be okay actually#i will consider reading more later
It’s fantastic actually, I love living in a place where a big chunk of the random population isn’t just carrying around dangerous weapons. A weapon turns a shouting match between strangers into a violent confrontation. The last time I was attacked was several years ago now, I was punched by a drunk man on a bus, and let me tell you there is no weapon in the hands of anybody (including me) that wouldn’t have made that situation much worse. I would be a lot more scared (and in a lot more actual physical danger) living somewhere where people just carried weapons down the street to defend themselves from the other people just carrying weapons down the street. The last time I handled a gun was hunting on the farm and I like it that way.
I just had ‘how to avoid dog bites’ training at work- and we were essentially told, there is no version of this where you win, regardless of weapon. So even in a fight in which the aggressor isn’t even able to pick up the stun gun or knife; you still lose.
I assume the same policy applies (at least partially) with dogs as it does with humans - do not become the aggressor, do not attack. Because if you attack, you better be prepared to keep attacking until they can’t come at you. You better put them on the ground and make sure they don’t get back up.
People (and dogs!) are more likely to disengage if the fight isn’t escalated. You pull out a weapon - you’ve just escalated this whole situation, big time.
I carry a knife in my work pants, because I open boxes, and need to poke weird things, and various other work related bits and pieces - this is the only way I’m legally allowed to carry it in Australia. I’ve never had a problem with police about this, probably 50% because I’m a small skinny white woman, and 50% because I’m clearly dressed in a work uniform that would make sense for me to have a knife or other items (steel cap work boots, cargo pants, reflective jacket etc).
When I lived on a farm the farmers all wore pocket knives on their belts into town and nobody gave a shit about it. Farmers use pocket knives for stuff, I don’t think it would’ve occurred to a cop that it would count as a weapon unless they were looking for a reason to have trouble with you. (But to be fair, a pocket knife would also be a terrible defensive weapon. By the time you’ve gotten the fucking thing open, your nose is already broken.)
That is so true. The simple truth of the matter is that there aren’t too many fights where carrying a defensive weapon is going to change the playing field. An inexperienced user, even one who’s taken self defense courses, is liable to panic and hurt themselves, but even if you know exactly what you’re doing and you’re calm and competent under conflict, the weapon is much more likely to be a hinderance than a help. Either you already have the upper hand in the conflict, in which case all a weapon is gonna do it help you grievously wound someone you didn’t need to wound, or you don’t have the upper hand (the other guy is bigger/better trained/less inebriated/outnumbers you), in which case they’re much more likely to end up with the weapon than you, and by drawing it you’ve escalated the fight to ‘dangerous weapon’ territory. Congratulations, those three dickheads following you down the street threateningly and calling you names are now three dickheads with a knife who may or may not decide to stab you since you made this a knife fight. The only situation in which carrying defensive weapons is a good general life policy is if you are actively looking to start a fight.
I mean, I live in a rural area- not uncommon in the slightest for someone to have a multi-tool or pocketknife on their belt. Mine is… not exactly that, probably a 12cm blade that flips out of the handle.
We do also only have like, uh, four cops, and they’ve got bigger shit to deal with than me for sure (it’s a day that ends in Y, so there’s probably a car on fire somewhere).
For me personally, part of my work is rocking up to peoples isolated rural houses and telling them things they don’t want to hear (you need to stop dumping rubbish in the creek). The most likely version of an incident is me being threatened with a gun, or alternatively being set on by an attack dog. Either way, I’m fucked. Me pulling out a weapon makes that situation infinitely worse. Best case, I’m still in the car, and I just… leave. Second best case scenario - I’m still in the car- and a couple tonnes of metal and my commitment to being alive means I’m running your ass over.
They’re talking (post ‘don’t get bit by dogs’ training) about getting us extendable batons (and the restricted weapons licenses required to have them) in order to help prevent dog attacks. Not to hit the dog if it attacks, but essentially to extend and hold across the body and shove into the mouth of the dog, so it bites it and not you. Gives time to keep the dog off you, and get to an escape route. We’ll see what happens with that, but theres also the chance we’ll go down the ‘riot shield’ pathway, which would be preferable- no license needed! And also in the case of incidents when there’s human members of the public about- a riot shield looks very much like ~not a weapon~
A riot shield is probably also easier to block a dog with, just in terms of surface area