What You Need to Know About Stun Guns

It all started when Thomas Edison decided to endorse the use of the electric chair to a state commission seeking alternatives ways for capital punishment. Of course stun guns today are not set up to be lethal, but they sure hurt and disable you temporarily!

How do stun guns work, you might ask? A stun gun is an electrical self defense product that uses high voltage to stop an attacker. Touching a person with the prongs on the stun gun quickly immobilizes the attacker. However, because the amperage of a stun gun is very low, no serious or permanent injury is inflicted.

The stun gun is designed to key into the nervous system. It dumps its energy into the muscles at a high pulse frequency that makes the muscles work very rapidly, but not efficiently. This rapid work cycle depletes blood sugar by converting it to lactic acid all in just seconds. The resulting energy loss makes it difficult to move and function. At the same time, the tiny neurological impulses that travel throughout the body to direct muscle movement are interrupted. This causes disorientation and loss of balance and leaves the attacker in a passive and confused condition for several minutes. Still, there is no significant effect on the heart and other organs.

As a general rule, a one-half second contact with a stun gun can repel and startle the attacker, giving some pain and muscle contraction. One to two seconds can cause muscle spasms and a dazed mental state. Over three seconds can cause loss of balance and muscle control, mental confusion and disorientation. Realize that 3 seconds is quite a long time when in a physical struggle. Every person is different and will react differently to the effects of a stun gun. What may put one person down in 3 seconds could take 5 seconds on another person.

The electrical shock that emits from the stun gun will not pass from the person being stunned to the person doing the stunning. The effect is localized only in the affected area and does not pass through the body. Even if you or the attacker is wet or standing in water and use the stun gun, you will not get shocked by this self defense product.

Stun guns are self defense products that come in all shapes and sizes. Some are disguised as pens, phones, pager, etc. Other stun guns come in baton form and flashlight shapes and some are as small as a cigarette pack. Of course they come in many colors and many also come with LED lights and alarms attached.

Stun Guns are legal in most states. Please click here for State Restrictions.

Home protection made easy

Sometimes the simplest things are the best things for protecting yourself from home intruders. This little device is a door stop and an alarm, it's called the Door Stop Alarm. It works like those brown rubber wedges we used to place under doors to prevent them from moving, but it's a little larger. This door stop has an extra benefit though, it also lets everyone around it know that someone has attempted to walk in unannounced. It has a 120 decibel alarm that is activated if pressure is applied to it.

The Door Stop Alarm is inexpensive and convenient to take with you when traveling. Just toss this lightweight, home safety product in your suitcase. It has an adjustable sensitivity switch which prevents tampering and also an on/off switch to prevent the unit from accidentally sounding. All this home security product needs is just a 9 volt battery!

Sleep easy in your home, hotel room or campus dorm. Anyone that hears this alarm while trying to open your door, will turn around and run away!

Police Warn KSU and KU Students of Serial Rapist

University of Kansas and Kansas State University students have been warned by police that the 13 rapes, which occurred in the last 8 years near both campuses, is believed to have been committed by the same man. Female students of both universities are very nervous about the alert. While many women have heard of these rapes, a few had thought it was just an urban legend.

Both universities are informing their female students about the rapist and how to take precautions. Information has been sent via email and through the university websites. Making students aware of where the emergency buttons are around the campuses, giving advice on avoiding dangerous situations and teaching self defense classes are just a few of the things being provided by university officials. There is even a student group called, Wildcats Against Rape that distribute pamphlets around campus and off campus about rape prevention. They also have their own website within the Kansas State University website.

Police have sent out an alert to inform the students and the public in general that the rapist has a habit of committing his rapes during breaks in school sessions, such as spring break. Past victims of the rapist have given details to police in regards to his actions, appearance, etc. They claimed that their rapist was a white male, mid-20s, weighing from 180 to 220 pounds and is about 5 feet 9 inches to 6 feet 2 inches tall. They also mentioned that the rapist was armed and in some cases wore dark clothing, gloves and boots. He broke into their homes while they were sleeping. There are also accounts that there was no forced entry of the rapist into the homes, which indicates that he perhaps snuck in during the day while doors were unlocked and later attacked his victims.

On a CNN article, Kansas State Women’s Center Director, Mary Todd, mentioned that she has worked with some of the victims and has learned from their accounts that there was often no sign of forced entry. This has led her to believe that the rapist entered residences during the day, when a lot of students feel safe leaving doors unlocked. By emphasizing such details, she said, the center hopes students will keep their doors locked.

Due to these terrible occurrences at both the University of Kansas and Kansas State University, I contacted the Kansas State Women’s Center, Director, Mary Todd. I asked Mary if the center would accept pepper spray donations from our website, WomenOnGuard.com. I mentioned that we, at WomenOnGuard.com donate on a regular basis to women’s crisis centers or to a similar cause around the nation. Mary was very grateful and accepted the website’s donation. I informed her that WomenOnGuard.com sells Mace spray, pepper spray, stun guns, personal alarms and Tasers, along with other non-lethal, self defense products. I also let her know that the website also contains many safety tips that can be downloaded in a PDF file.

It’s unfortunate that young university women have to not only worry about their grades while attending school but also have to withstand the dangers of being raped or killed. It’s tough enough to keep the grades up and even tougher to watch out for your own life. We hope that our pepper spray donation will help to keep these women safer.

Don't take my Taser!

Many of us are traveling for Spring Break, business meetings or other planned events. Some of us will go to the airport instead of driving or taking a train to our destination. As a safety precaution we always carry a self defense product such as a Taser. Beware that your self defense product, be it a Taser, mace pepper spray or stun gun are considered hazardous materials in airports. Your Taser or other personal defense products will be confiscated by airport officials before boarding your plane if you plan on caring it on the plane with you. You might cry, 'Don't take my Taser!', but it won't do you any good! No need to panic though, you are allowed to include a Taser or stun gun in your suitcase only if it goes as luggage under the plane. Pepper spray is a different story, it will not be allowed at all, anywhere on the plane. Since pepper spray is usually in aerosol form, it has the potential to expand in different atmospheric pressures while traveling and burst or explode, therefore contaminating all it's surroundings and vents on the plane. Always check with your airlines regarding their rules on carrying self defense products. Rules and restrictions may change.

Traveling on international flights is a whole different story. You will not be allowed at all to carry a self defense product such as a Taser, pepper spray or a stun gun on the plane. You can't carry it on board or put it in the luggage section of the plane.

It also might be a good idea to ask about laws pertaining to self defense products if you are traveling by train or ship. Other traveling sources might have different restrictions regarding Tasers, mace pepper spray and stun guns.

Besides a Taser, mace pepper spray or stun gun, not being permitted on planes, your destination location might have state or city restrictions that don't allow citizens to carry such items. This will also be the case even if you travel to your final destination in car. If you are traveling to a different country, they also might have restrictions against carrying some self defense products. Avoid being stopped by local police in different cities. Always check the laws of your final destination before going there with your self defense product.

To get information about state and city restrictions in the U.S., you can go to our State Restrictions page.

Need a cool place to hide your valuables?

We all have something at home or at work that is valuable to us. Sometimes we don't want others to know that we have it or where it's at. Let's face it, occasionally friends, co-workers or even family members are nosy and will snoop in drawers or closets to see what we have, not to mention burglars!

Sometimes our stuff such as jewelry or money might not be convenient to place in a safe deposit box in a bank. Most of us don't have a secure wall safe at home or at the office either. To have units like these is usually costly and inconvenient. A much less expensive and more convenient thing to have is a HIDDEN SAFE. As a matter of fact, according to police, hidden safes or diversion safes are better than a locked safe and a thousand times cheaper. Hidden safes are items that look like things you normally have around you, like a candle, water bottle, ajax can, etc. Yet they are built in a way that you can hide valuable things in them such as cash and jewelry. The average person or burglar would never guess to look, for example in a wall clock or a plastic mug, for money or jewelry. Hidden safes or diversion safes come disguised in many shapes and sizes and are so convenient to have!

Diversion safes are also handy to have if you live in a college dorm or if you travel a lot and stay at many different places and want to hide your cash or valuables. Most hidden safes are light and small enough to carry around.

Self defense against hospital cell phones

What do we mean, you ask? Not only do you need to be prepared with self defense products in public places, you now need to take precautions in hospitals! Latest news reports are showing that those doctors that help you in hospitals and swing by to check up on you, could possibly make you sicker than you where when you first walked in the hospital.

Recent studies show that not just doctors, but other personnel such as nurses, carry germ infected cell phones around the hospitals that carry all sorts of germs or microbes. Some of the bacteria found on these cell phones used in hospitals had the super bug, MRSA, that is multi-resistant to many antibiotics and also deadly.

So next time you are at a hospital and are going to shake hands with a doctor, BEWARE! Make sure he or she cleans their hands before they touch yours. Make sure all your nurses and helpers clean their germy hands each time they step into your room. Don't take for granted that they cleaned their hands before they walked in. Don't worry if they think you are a hypercondriac... It's better to use self defense and be healthy than to die because of pride or a dirty cell phone!

Mother Beats Sex Offender

Last Saturday a women by the name of Tammy Gibson, a mother of 2 girls, was sentenced to 3 months in jail for attacking William A. Baldwin, a level-3 sex offender.

Baldwin who is 7 feet, 3 inches tall, had moved into Tammy's neighborhood last June and police passed along flyers with his photo to notify neighbors of his presence. Tammy mentioned that she beat the hell out of him with a baseball bat and would do it again! She said that last summer she saw him chatting up her 10-year-old daughter, Renee Maria Perez, on the playground and that she had recognized him from the police flyers. "He tried to give me fireworks and I wouldn't take it," her daughter had told her. That really infuriated Tammy. She went to the trailer park where he lived and asked for him. When he stepped out of his home, she told him that he had molested her little girl and proceeded to beat him with a baseball bat, over and over again. He suffered from a broken arm because of it. Police said that she later admitted that she was wrong telling Baldwin that he molested her daughter. But she did mention to the press, when they asked if she regretted what she had done, "No, I'd do it again if not better," and "I don't care if it hurts me, I don't regret it. It got him away from my kids and all the other kids in the neighborhood." Tammy hopes that her action sends a message to law makers and hopefully makes them change some laws pertaining to sex offenders.

Whether she was right or wrong in this incidence, her actions did accomplish getting a level-3 sex offender out of her neighborhood. Records show that since then, William A. Baldwin has moved out from Tacoma to Seattle.