Self Defense For Seniors: Pepper Spray or Personal Alarms?

Helping innocent, law-abiding citizens protect themselves in a safe, responsible and humane way is what I am most passionate about. One group of people that I think can really benefit from carrying instruments of non-lethal self-defense (perhaps more than most) is our senior citizens. Seniors, on average, are less apt at handling themselves in a physical altercation than they were when they were in their 20′s and 30′s. That is why seniors are often targeted by scumbag criminals looking for what they feel will be an easy score. Seniors can help level the playing field in an attack by securing for themselves a number of items of self-defense. I'd like to discuss two of my favorite, and those are defensive sprays and personal alarms.

A defensive spray, or pepper spray as they are usually referred to, is an extremely effective, yet relatively safe means of non-lethal self-defense. Pepper spray is basically just that, peppers. There is a compound in the hot peppers we eat called capsaicin and this capsaicin is exactly what gives the pepper its spiciness. A pepper's spiciness is measured using a think called the scoville system. The higher the scoville units, the hotter that pepper is going to be. Have you ever taken a bite from a habanero pepper? Those are super-hot and you are looking at about 150,000-300,000 scoville units. The pepper spray coming from your average, civilian-carried pepper spray is about 3,000,000 scoville units. So think of a pepper 10 to 20 times as hot as a habanero and then think about having that pepper rubbed into your eyes, nose, throat and lungs. I promise you that burning sensation is more than enough to stop the vast majority of attackers. One nice thing about pepper spray is that this burning sensation does eventually go away after about 30 minutes and after that there are rarely any long term side effects, so you can effectively protect yourself without doing grave and permanent damage to another human being.

Another option for seniors is a personal alarm, they are not quite as effective (in my opinion) as pepper spray but they can still be very effective and they are 100% safe and harmless to all parties involved. A personal alarms works by emitting an extremely audible alarm that helps to both scare the hell out of would-be assailants and to attract the attention of anyone in the area that isn't completely deaf. Most of these alarms come in the form of a keychain so that carrying the device is not something one will usually forget.

Both of these options are effective and both are immensely more effective than carrying nothing and just 'hoping' you don't become the victim of an assault. So please do yourselves and your loved ones a favor and strongly consider carrying one, the other or both.