Magic Wand For Sale

The devices marketed to people who are scared to death of criminal violence and yet at the same time don't want to actually hurt anybody, even criminals, range from the merely sad to the hilarious.

The latest one I've seen is the "SALT", which stands for...well, I can't be arsed to find out, really...and is a CO2-powered pistol that fires .68" balls filled with some natural blend of eleven herbs and spices designed to incapacitate your attacker.

If this sounds like a paintball pistol shooting OC-filled balls, that's because it appears to be one. Why a five-digit Indiegogo campaign is needed to obtain off-the-shelf Tippmanns and resell them at a 33%+ markup is beyond me.

Paintball guns firing pepper balls are used by law enforcement specifically as less-lethal weapons in situations where lethal force is not necessarily called for; dispersing pre-riotous mobs, for instance. But whenever cops deploy less-lethal force, it's always backed up with the threat of the real deal. Pepper spray might deter someone committing a crime of opportunity on the jogging path, but selling it as a home defense weapon? Look, someone who is forcing entry into a dwelling they know is occupied can be hard to deter by making their eyes all burn-y and watery. In fact, it might make them mad.

My favorite part of the whole fluffy ad campaign is this:

Well, there's your problem! If you'd stop using black powder and shift to smokeless like the rest of us did in the mid-1890s then you'd clear that right up. Go check the page out; there are plenty of opportunities to sprain your eye rolling muscles there.

This is just another in a long line of use-of-force tools marketed to people who know nothing about the use of force and, indeed, view it as somehow distasteful or degrading. Calling this thing retarded would be an insult to honest, upstanding mental defectives.
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