I am not a survivalist or a shoot first and ask questions latter type of guy. I am worried about the possible 10 on the Y2K scale and how I can protect my family. I live in the city 500,000+ in the older part of town.

Six months ago I bought a pump shot gun and several boxes of shells. Although I was in the army I never personally owned a fire arm. After purchasing the gun I began to have concerns that the shotgun can only answer the most extreme of situations and only with either intimidation or deadly force.

My concern was that the shotgun was limited in its response and that not every situation may require extreme and deadly force. I needed something that might present a potential, unarmed, rioter with second thoughts on coming down my way, but without having to decideon the to kill or not to kill option.

I saw on one of the cable channels that police were experimenting with paintball guns that shot paintballs loaded with mace. With that I bought a paintball gun and began to experiment. I soon discovered that with a needle and syringe, the paint can be removed and replaced with the extract of jalapeno peppers/extracted capsaisin. This stuff can be purchased from places like sammcgees.com.

Aside from the sting of being hit with the paintball, the "pure cap" will make them think twice.

But if that isn't enough force another near lethal form of ammunition is marbles, the kind that you used to play with as a kid. I've been experimenting with them and have found that they will shatter a watermelon nicely.

Of course as a last resort to spraying someone with several hundred paintballs you will want to make sure that your model 12 winchester is slung over your shoulder.

-- banker (hokanson@teleport.com), June 29, 1999

Answers

Do those come in fully auto versions?

Reminds me of the "fruitcake resistance league" posts that appeared around december '98... "Youll get my fruitcakes when you take them out of my cold dead, candied hands!!!"

I'm buying mine tomorrow, I got's lots of marbles already.

-- otay (spanky@lilrsacles.com), June 29, 1999.

Another very effective non-lethal defense weapon is to use those high powered water guns and add a little Tabasco Sauce! In fact I presently carry a smaller version every night when my wife and I go for a walk in the neighborhood. If anyone gets smart with me, I let them have it! I also carry a stun gun and when they are buzy with Tabasco in their eyes, I can stun them.

-- freddie (freddie@thefreeloader.com), June 29, 1999.

Just my opinion, banker, but I was taught that you don't point a gun at someone unless you intend to "plug 'em"...

There are other means, such as smoke grenades and CS cannisters that would be more appropriate for unarmed rioters.

Keep in mind that IF we go 10, and you are experiencing rioters, that rioting is illegal...and while they may be unarmed, their intention is to destroy property and cause mayhem. If you chase them off tonight, they will be back tomorrow night. Maybe armed this time. Think about it. You have a right to protect your property.

-- Don (dwegner@cheyenneweb.com), June 29, 1999.

Advice of just plugging someone outside of your home is very dangerous during Martial Law! If you have some dead body's stacked in front of your home, what are you going to do with them?

If you do not have the means to immediately dispose of them, those who enforce Martial Law will haul you off to where you never want to go! You'll never get a fair trial during Martial Law! Your family will never see you again!

-- y2k ready (y2k@ready.com), June 29, 1999.

I lost most of my marbles, but I plan on renting all of the Rambo movies to help me prepare for all the have-nots that are not polite when they visit next year. Also maybe a few disaster movies plus the Dirty Dozen and the Wild Bunch. No more Doris Day movies for me!

-- sy (x@y.com), June 29, 1999.

I didn't exactly "advise" banker to go around plugging people...in fact I offered a couple of alternatives. There are ways of surviving in an Urban environment, but why anyone would WANT to is beyond me.

500,000+ people? Sheeeeesh. There ain't that many people in my whole state! Best option, if you feel this is a serious situation, is to leave while you can.

Otherwise, you can sit in your urban apartment sipping a Budweiser and watching Dan Blather report on the rioting, while the rioters burn your place down.

-- Don (dwegner@cheyenneweb.com), June 29, 1999.

As a naturally non-violent person and a painter, the whole idea appeals to me. Shot by art. The victim, presumably, screams: "I'm blue! oh my God! It's...it's blue [or yellow or whatever color suits the artist-attacker's mood].

Sort of a decorator's defense weapon. Tres chic.

-- Sara Nealy (keithn@aloha.net), June 29, 1999.

Recently saw a program on the non-lethal use of paintball guns... They turn out to be fairly damaging -- one girl lost her eye; other's showed bruises, broken ribs....the push is on to ban these too. They may be a less lethal form (warning method) of self protection, but don't be fooled into playing around with them as if they are harmless. In other words, don't practice on humans or animals. They pack a severe punch. I like the idea of loading with the pepper spray.

-- Shelia (Shelia@active-stream.com), June 29, 1999.

If you are considering a paintballl gun, look REALLY HJARD and try to find one of the Mac10/11 paint ball guns. .40 cal ball, lg rifle ( I think, or lg shotgun) primer propells the ball, the "brass" is plastic and reloadable, with the proper primers and paint balls. The balls used to be available in Red, Blue, CS, and solid gelatine. (Yes that's CS as in "C Super" the crowd control gas). These were available briefly in the early 1980's, and then for a while after to Prison guards. There are a lot of them around, just have to look.

The cyclic rate is the same as the Mac, the gun is almost all plastic except for the barrel, and the muzzle velocity is very impressive.

(Pardon the fractured spelling and grammar, another overnight to Detroit)

Cjhuck

-- Chuck, a night driver (rienzoo@en.com), June 29, 1999.

Banker,

I have to disagre, I think you are a survivalist. That idae of the pepper bals was great. If your truly against killing people, and you still have that shotgun, maybe you should consider rock salt loads. They sting like a dickens and have proven to be pretty effective. Also rubber bullets like the police use are effective but be careful they will kill children. I presume the rock salt will too so you just be careful where your aiming that shotgun of yours.

-- (html@guy.com), June 29, 1999.

Bring a knife to a gun fight?....smart

-- CygnusXI (luppotreb@aol.com), June 29, 1999.

I think he talking about bringing a non-lethal gun to a knife fight...

-- (sounds@reasonable .to me), June 29, 1999.

If you are up North, keep the paint balls outside. Frozen ones hurt like hell! It's like being hit with a shot gun slug at 300 fps, ouch.

-- Bill (y2khippo@yahoo.com), June 29, 1999.

How is shooting marbles and potentially hitting someone in the head non-lethal. If you are not going to shoot to kill don't shoot!

-- Johnny (JLJTM@BELLSOUTH.NET), June 29, 1999.

Crap, now I gotta got get my CO2 bottle refilled. (I have an older PMI Trracer pump-action paintball gun I used to snipe the less skilled paintballers with the semiauto paintguns that though the "spray and pray" philosophy was the way to play. The look of shock to be taken out with a single shot was priceless, hehehe...)

Anyway, the typical paintball does about 300 fps out of the barrel, varying widely based on temperature and humidity, gas pressure in your bottle/cartridge, venturi and bolt design or their settings if they're adjustable, and so on. A nearly 3/4" wide ball of gelatin with two ounces of paint moving at that speed will leave a 4" wide bruise on your arm from 30 yrds. or so. I know, I was hit from that distance and that's what I had to remind me of not ducking. They hurt like a M.F. unless you have a seriously thick jacket on or something. (Side note: Aim for the thigh as they're often not well protected by jackets, etc. and easily hittable for max. pain infliction. Plus, it's hard to run when you've been charleyhorsed by a paintball. I know this from experience as well.)

If you don't mind dropping some $, go get a good semi-automatic paintgun like a Tippman ProAm or something. The semiautos allow a surprising rate of fire with minimal fuss. (How fast can you pull a trigger?) Get a hopper-style ammo holder if you expect to have to deal with multiple targets in need of "persuasion" to go elsewhere; you can get ammo hoppers that feed 200 paintballs into the chamber. Get a decent barrel cleaning tool to empty the barrel if you should have a paintball break on its way out. (Paintguns don't shoot worth a flip with a layer of think paint in the barrel.)

Get a 12g cartridge adapter for your paintgun and a whole mess of 12- gram CO2 cartridges (you know, those little metal cylinders that are popular for BB guns; each is usually good for about a dozen shots from a .68 paintgun before the velocity drops off too much) as a backup as bottled CO2 could become hard to come by. Or, get a few 7- oz. bottles and keep 'em filled. If you've got the $ and the space to store it, get a full-sized CO2 bottle and the adapters and pressure gauge needed to fill the bottles yourself and you'll never run out of gas.

BTW, frozen paintballs are about as hard as marbles. Marbles can score your paintgun's barrel and the paintballs will have an increased likelihood of popping in-barrel. (That's what that barrel cleaner is for, to squeegy out the goop if a ball breaks on its way out.) So, freeze a few and use them for those really persistent people. A frozen paintball at close range on a full bottle can break someone's leg.

Once I saw a guy fill two paintballs with each of the two chemicals that make polyurethane foam, of the sort used as foam insulation in a can. He shot them both at one target and when the second hit it started making a layer of sticky mess that swelled up as it foamed up. Wasn't a very big splotch of course but it was way nastier than paint to get off your skin, etc. Add some capsaicin extract to that and you'd have some really really bad things to get shot by...

Another interesting choice is chlorine bleach and dishwashing soap. Might soften the gelatin though but the gases that combination produce is very bad to the lungs and sinuses. (Greenpeace liked using jars filled with that combo as grenades to lob at whaling ships.)

I'msure there's a lot more one could do with a good paintgun... Just watch where you point that thing...

OddOne

-- OddOne (mocklamer@geocities.com), June 29, 1999.

The paintball gun is actually good for scaring away unarmed but persistant humans. I used mine a couple of times at my old shop and then let the landlady borrow it, one night a couple guys were banging on my shop door trying to force it open.

She leaned out the 3rd floor window and screamed at them to get out or she would call the police.

One of them looked up at her, then they both went back to banging on my shop door.

She got my Tippmann semi-automatic and leaned out the window and fired about 5 rounds at them. when she finally started hitting them, they took off, FAST.

This was an incident where the paintball gun was VERY pursuasive in a non-lethal way. If she had shot them with a real gun, there would have been a lot of repercussions.

the frozen balls is VERY good suggestion.

finding .60 cal ball bearings is an interesting option as well.

Another interesting load option (that I have not tried yet, but will) is a variation on the 2-part method.

I have access to loadable clear styrene (I think) balls that are used for Special Effects use in Motion Pictures.

You get 2 halves, they nest together and you use CA (superglue) to seal them up.

One of the things we can do is use "zirc hits" or "spark hits", which is a mix of aquarium gravel and zirconium mixed in one load. When the ball hits, it breaks and the aquarium gravel and the zirconium and the plastic shell all get pulverized and the zirconium bits ignite and BURN, they look like a bullet ricocheting off a piece of steel in a movie (and that's why bullet hits in movies always have sparks whenever the shooter misses)

If you load one ball with some jellied gasoline and then follow this hit with a spark load, guess what? you've set them on fire!

WHeeeee!

(well, hopefully they'll run away from your house and others will see them on fire and decide that being on fire is not a good thing and maybe they should just keep moving)

but if they come back, you better have a shotgun ready.

-- Plonk! (realaddress@hotmail.com), June 29, 1999.

(1) I like it...it gives a non-lethal possibility, should one be required. If you use oil paint or something else that is difficult to remove (India ink?), you also mark the intruder to aid in police or military intervention. That does presuppose that one of them will still be operating, but we can hope for merely a 9.

(2) You can have my paintgun when you pry it from my cold, sticky hands?

-- Mad Monk (madmonk@hawaiian.net), June 30, 1999.

You may wish to read the book (I'm blanking out on the name)by a former policeman and sharpshooter, Mossad Ayoob. (Out of print, but amazon.com will order for you.) I have just read it, and it's excellent. The contention in several book, including that one, is that one must meet deadly force with deadly force...and that the first shot had better be the one that does it. I think that looters who break into homes in a massive breakdown of society will not come unarmed. Remember, it is the criminals who have the guns...Bill and friends are trying to take them from the good folks, or make them feel guilty about owning them!!! However, if you wish to stun someone unconscious long enough to handcuff him and either turn him over to the authorities, assuming that there will be any around then, you could purchase a Taser beam. It renders the central nervous system unable to move, and is a guaranteed knock-out for 15 minutes. If there is no authority to aid you after the 15 minutes, then you have a BIG problem of what to do with this individual. Decisions are difficult in this area, but your family needs to be your paramount consideration if anyone breaks into your home during a 10. Good luck!

-- Woman Defender (alert&prepared@aol.com), June 30, 1999.

On June 30th Mad Monk says: you also mark the intruder to aid in police or military intervention If there is such a thing as fluorescent pink tatoo ink, you could mark the guy so he could be seen sneaking around at night, not just by police, but by anybody who might need to see him.

-- Dancr (minddancr@aol.com), June 30, 1999.

".60 cal ball bearings is an interesting option as well."

... but would that "score the barrel", like marbles, rendering the weapon more susceptible to paint ball ruptures in the barrel? What causes scoring? Poor fit in barrel?

-- alan (foo@bar.com), July 01, 1999.