The way I have seen and experienced Pepper spray , its very easy to keep the stuff out of you lungs. Its just "painted" on you face. This is not pleasant but its far better than breathing the stuff. Pepper and Mace cause an involuntary response in/on your body. If you breath the stuff into your wind passages, they will be inflamed. Depending on the person you might want to throw up but can't. Or you might actually throw up. You will be in pain. There is no way around that fact. But dealing with pain varies with different people. This does effect your breathing to some extent. Depends on the exposure and person. Even if the stuff is not breathed in, you still will have issues.... Once you are hit with pepper or mace, your sinus cavities are going to be emptied. No real pleasant. Unless you have a flu or cold. Pepper spray will cause your eyes to shut. This is a good thing. Open eyes hurt. Closed eyes hurt less. Even after having a water hose connected to ones eye balls there still is pain and you want you eyes closed. Closed is good. This lasts for 30-45 minutes. Then you take a shower and it reactivates for more fun.... 8-) Pepper Spray with a content of 5-6% is all that is needed for two legged critters. Higher percentages just increase the Time In Pain. The spray should be an alcohol base not water. Pepper is an oil. Oil and water don't mix. Alcohol and oil will mix. Don't use around flames. NYPD use some Pepper spray grenades on a barricaded suicidal subject a few years ago. He was in a small room and even after the enduring the massive amounts of spray he still would not come out. They tossed in flash bangs. This is usually good. But since the guy was covered in spray aka alcohol this was bad. He let up like a torch..... Don't use spray around flames. Pepper spray does not guarantee an attacker, 2 or 4 legged will stop. Even a 12 gauge does not provide that kind of guarantee. But the 12 gauges does provide much better odds. Even if pepper spray does not stop an attacker it should at least diminish their capabilities. I know of incidents where cans of spray have been emptied on people and they still kept on fighting. But at least they could not see, they where in pain, and likely could not breath at their normal capacities. Without pepper spray they most likely would have been shot. Pepper spray is a tool used to hopefully prevent more violent incidents. That is all. I would not put my life on the line with only a can of pepper spray. There was an earlier comment about a White Bear hit by multiple rifle rounds. Remember that military rounds are FMJ, full metal jackets. These are designed to penetrate a body. They are not designed to stay within the body. A bullet that fully penetrates is a danger to other people. Course in combat that is not a bad thing. But an overpenatrating bullet means tha tthe full energy of the round is wasted. This is badness if you are really trying to stop something/someone. You don't see hunters using FMJs since they want to bring down their game NOW. Not later which is why they used expanding bullets. Self defense rounds are the same. A 12 gauge with a slug has some mighty high energy levels and is an awesome self defense tool. Later, Dan McCarty *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Fri Nov 07 2003 - 13:34:21 PST
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