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In my daily YouTube trawl for TTAG’s Armed Intelligentsia I came across this gem from Red Pill Philosophy. RPP’s video begins with the usual, entirely reasonable kvetch about UK subjects’ inability to carry any form of personal self-defense weapon. Surprise! I learned about the one form of self-defense “weaponry” the UK government allows the Queen’s subjects . . .

Criminal identification spray. Or, to use its proper name, Temporary Witness Identification (TWI) spray.

Yup, it’s a chemical you spray on an attacker or attackers so that police can ID the bad guy(s) after you’ve been robbed, beaten, knifed, shot and/or raped. Also available in the U.S.! Only $50!

In the Land of Hopeless Glory, subjects can buy the same stuff for just £6.79 (around $10). “With the ever increasing crime rate, this product provides an alternative way to protect ourselves and deter attack,” promises Farb Gel, the U.K.’s number one TWI spray.

As John McEnroe famously pronounced, you cannot be serious! Only I am.

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74 COMMENTS

  1. Once upon a time, boys and girls, the sun did not set upon the English empire.
    Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

    • In the US of A we celebrate INDEPENDENCE DAY on July the 4th. But NO, there is no INDEPENDENCE DAY in and royalist/monarchial nation, now or ever.

    • Closest thing would be Guy Fawkes Night.

      “Guy Fawkes Night, also known as Guy Fawkes Day, Bonfire Night and Firework Night, is an annual commemoration observed on 5 November, primarily in Great Britain. Its history begins with the events of 5 November 1605, when Guy Fawkes, a member of the Gunpowder Plot, was arrested while guarding explosives the plotters had placed beneath the House of Lords. Celebrating the fact that King James I had survived the attempt on his life, people lit bonfires around London, and months later the introduction of the Observance of 5th November Act enforced an annual public day of thanksgiving for the plot’s failure.” — Wikipedia

    • So there I was at an air base in the middle east on the 4th of July, watching the US Air Force “Tops in Blue” perform their song-and-dance routine. I was hanging out with some Royal Australian Air Force guys watching the show. One of them leans over and says “Yeah, we’ve got the 4th of July in Australia too. We call it Wednesday.”

  2. I am utterly baffled as to *why* the women of Europe aren’t at the very least *demanding* from their ‘leaders’ the right to carry at the minimum pepper spray.

    What will happen to the world when Europe finally falls to Islam?

    • europe won’t fall to islam. Russia will step in before that happens. Then europe becomes vassal states to Russia.

      But so what? europe is not relevent to the world.

      • I think this would be the most positive outcome. A strong Russia with the ability to impose it’s will, allied with the US would be about as unstoppable force as you could get.

        • It might provide a solution for the Muslim problem. Oligarchs, thugs, assassins, whatever. They aren’t communists anymore, and will quickly join the party where they start getting blown up by car bombs simply for existing and not being a Muslim.

          The other thing is that Russia is running out of Russians at an alarming rate, whereas the Muslims are increasing their numbers too fast for comfort. Stick with Russia short term I say. They’re less likely to be a long-term issue if relations go bad.

        • If we could get on the same page as Russia it would certainly be a great counter to China. Russia could conscript x number of men and women from all the european states and use them to buffer their border with China.

          A muslim invasion of europe could be a win-win for us.

        • Contrary to fears, Russia is not interested in taking over Western Europe. They do want the same sphere of influence that they’ve used historically. But if you’re hoping for Russian intervention helping it’s as unlikely as the fears of Russian invasion.

        • Uncle_Pickle good comments.

          Vladimir still thinks it is 1986, not 2017. Russia is not the USSR. The latter had a population of about 300+ million, although conscripts from the “Asian Republics” were not considered as reliable as ethnic Russians. Russia now has a population of about 120 million and is set to decline over the next 30+ years to 100 million.

          In restoring the Soviet Union, forcing 200+ million unwilling people to join is not going to end well. Look at Chechnya. Once people taste freedom they don’t want to go back to servitude.

          Even the USA has a population of about 300+ million. Who has the reserves now?

      • Last time I cared to check stats, there were approximately 2 mil illegal immigrants in central part of Motherland, Moscow included. I doubt Europeans even began to experience same amount of problems (if not with crime, then with labor) that we do.

    • There will be mass rapes that have not occurred since the Roman times. Only now you will see it all on Facebook and YouTube.

      • Multiple attackers? (As in gang rape)

        The stuff apparently foams a bit on contact, so – “A woman can run faster with her skirt up than a man can run with his pants down!” (/sarc)

        But I can see two major fails in this product:

        1. With the prevalence of infidel-rape apparently the fashion in Europe these days it will become a badge of honor among Islamo-thugs to be walking around with a dark green face, especially since the local constabulary are generally reluctant to enter those neighborhoods to do an investigation or arrest.

        2. In order to stymie police investigations the young men will spray each other with the marker so that identification of the actual perpetrator will be impossible.

        And by the way, some of you lawyers correct me if I’m wrong, but unless you have independent proof that you were protecting yourself from a crime in progress, wouldn’t spraying someone with a semi-indelible paint be considered assault?

    • A subject demands nothing, they don’t any longer have the power nor the right to demand anything . When you turn in your guns, you turn in your rights. The end.

  3. Perhaps the Brits can shove it down the attacker’s throat until it ruptures his spleen. That’s pretty much all it’s good for as a “self-defense weapon.”

    • But…but…in Jolly Olde Angle-Land, you’re not ALLOWED to injure or kill your attacker. ‘S not sporting, dontcha know, wot wot?

      • The VICTIM is charged with assault if the victim sprays it in the CRIMINALS face! Be careful with that while you are being attacked.

  4. Actually, it isn’t even that simple. If the spray can potentially blind, even for a few seconds, it is considered an offensive weapon, equivalent to a gun. The only truly 100% no questions asked legal self defense item in the UK is a personal alarm, which is just a box with a speaker and a light that when you pull the pin it makes a lot of noise and flashes.

    • The law says that there is nothing that can be carried for the purpose of self-defense. If you use a pen as an improvised stabby tool during an attack, and the court can show, from a face book post that you had said you planned to use it as a defensive weapon, you would be charged with a felony and could end up in jail.

      Even worse, if you were attacked in your home, and you used a cricket bat as an improvised bludgeon, you would be charged with battery, and charged with a crime. But ultimately, the people do get the government abuse that they will accept.

      • So if a cricket bat would land you battery charges would a badminton racquet get you collared for racketeering?

      • If you’re likely to be charged with battery anyway, here’s a good idea-

        Take a pair of good wool socks and drop 4 or 5 “D” cells in one. Slip it into the other sock, for added strength, then tie a knot in the open end. Then use your imagination and “practice, practice, practice”.

        Once again, of limited utility when faced with multiple attackers.

        But it brings up the question with all of these prohibitions – is it better to be charged with assault for defending yourself, whatever the less-than-lethal means, or to be the victim of a successful criminal assault?

      • “But ultimately, the people do get the government abuse that they will accept.”

        Put another way: … “all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”

      • Thomas,

        Correct for carrying weapons in a public place, but in your home or similar the prosecution has to prove you knowingly and deliberately used unreasonable force; no requirement to calibrate your response, only to stop shooting, stabbing or striking if they clearly run away.

        So, in the extremely unlikely event of someone trying to smash down my front door with hostile intent, I can grab whatever’s to hand and use it to defend myself and my family. If that happens to be the longsword in its display stand in the upstairs hallway (three feet of very, very sharp blade) then so be it – if you don’t to be at risk of becoming a king-size shishkebab, don’t break into my house while I’m at home.

        Investigation is inevitable if you take a weapon to someone in the UK, but prosecution is not, and especially not at home.

        http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/9569359/Expect-to-be-shot-if-you-burgle-gun-owners-judge-warns-criminals.html – note that the judge threw the burglars’ claims out and the homeowners were released without charge.

  5. Unfortunately, the laws in the UK really are “that fucking crazy” (watch the video until about 3 minutes in if you’re confused by my comment). Their laws have NO provision for self defense. In other words, they make zero distinction between offensive and defensive violence. If you beat the shit out of someone who tries to rob you, even in your own home, than in the eyes of the law, it is no different from if you walked up to a random stranger on the street and began to stomp the shit out of them. With Brexit, it seems like at least a portion of England is maybe near the beginning of the right track to finding their balls. But at the end of the day, people get the government they deserve. It’s very hard for me to feel much in the way of sympathy (even for the victims of horrific crimes) when the people are so meek that they are OK with having zero legal right to self defense.

  6. Or a sneaky can of hornet/wasp killer in the kisser…it actually squirting a pretty good stream and distance…

  7. A few years ago I was reading about the UK’s gun/weapon control laws and I was flabbergasted that a set of steak knives is a controlled weapon. Ordinary folks can still buy a set of steak knives at a store, but must register the purchase in a manner that is similar to the one we do in California when we buy a firearm. Not sure if there is a 10 day waiting period.

    • Knives with points are discouraged. In every village there is ‘drop box’ for people to voluntarily turn in their ‘pointed knives’. Stabbings there are the common method of criminals. How hard is it to grind a point on a knife?

      • How hard is it to grind a pretty nice Bowie from an automotive leaf spring you can pick up in a junk yard?

        For that matter, it would not be difficult to 3D print a pretty deadly stilleto or Fairbairn. And I don’t know about the U.K., but I have a nylon dagger that has a strong and potentially lethal point, and is invisible to x-rays or metal detectors.

        https://www.selfdefenseproducts.com/product/cia-knife

        • I hate to burst your bubble, but if you want a Fairbairn-Sykes in the UK, you simply click to a site like this one –

          http://www.sheffieldknives.co.uk/acatalog/5-91.html

          choose which sheath you want and whether you want the blade polished or blackened, pay your money, and your knife will arrive shortly thereafter in the post. I know this because I’ve got one in my study (makes an excellent letter-opener among its other virtues). The most intrusive check I’ve encountered when buying knives is from a website that asked for a photograph of my driver’s licence, to confirm I was over 18.

          Carrying it around in public without a sensible reason would be illegal and unwise; having it in the house perfectly OK.

    • Got to call BS on that – the only control on purchasing knives here (steak knives, kitchen knives, whatever) is an age check, similar to if you’re buying alcohol or solvents. No registration or records required.

  8. You do realize that the “U.K.” does not have uniform weapon laws, right?

    The 1997 pistol ban only applies to England, Scotland, and Wales. It does not apply to Northern Ireland, Gibraltar, or any of the overseas territories.

  9. England has been tightening weapons laws since 1919. Scared by the Russian revolution the government decided it was better to disarm people rather than fix the food shortages and other problems existed after WW1.

    Every crisis since has been used for more rules. Says a lot about various “ruling classes” worldwide when they are more scared of their own people than outsiders

  10. So are the gals to spray this on their hoohah before going out and thus so can then prove an attacker was successful? Or are they to attempt to spray on Mohammad’s schlong?

  11. Kvetch? You do realize that the vast majority of your readers are not members of ” the chosen” like yourself, and therefore do not have an expansive vocabulary of Yiddish?

  12. Spray paint is cheaper, just as effective and a real pain if you get it in your eyes so I assume it will bother them significantly if you get it in theirs.

  13. So dye that colors an attacker’s clothes and skin?

    What that is, is an incentive to kill the victim and take the “weapon”.

  14. “it’s a chemical you spray on an attacker or attackers so that police can ID the bad guy(s) after you’ve been robbed, beaten, knifed, shot and/or raped.”

    We have something similar here in the good ol’ USA. It’s called a hollow point, and it’s very effective before you’ve been robbed, beaten, knifed, shot and/or raped. Police can ID the perpetrator because he’s lying in your yard.

  15. Just ask any woman who lived in Eastern Germany at the end of WWII. Most were raped over and over by Russian soldiers. Number of rapes and rapists has never been higher.

  16. Bacon-scented PAM cooking spray might be somewhat effective, although it would probably be banned by the Islamophobia-phobes.

  17. RF’s article and all the subsequent comments go to show quite conclusively how wise and far-sighted the American Founders were when they included the Second Amendment in our Constitution and why we should fight fiercely and relentlessly to insure its continued protection for our natural right to keep and bear Arms.

  18. Listen up, Brits, and listen up good: there are many things at your disposal which are legal and still more effective than the gel stuff. Pack a can of shaving cream.. your attacker will die of laughter. Launch into a speech from “Julius Caesar”—to put the perps asleep. Trick your opponent into eating some scones to make him sick. If there’s a will there’s a way!

  19. Wait, they mean that Police is not Omnipotent? That they mgiht *gasp* fail to catch the criminal? To strike upon unlawful with, you know, great vengeance and furious anger?

    Nothing less from a country that caters to oil-rich fat cats.

  20. So they find someone with the dye. That person claims he was sprayed by a racist just because he was a Muslim.
    Case dismissed.

  21. Does this identification spray burn eyes? If so criminals that end up sprayed in the eyes could suffer burning eyes.

  22. Applying Occam’s-Switchblade again:

    This makes perfect sense if you are to dumb to be trusted with anything dangerous, too worthless to be worth protecting, and too weird to be allowed at the cool kids’ table where decisions are made (including about you.)

    You just don’t matter. The rest is details.

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