One of these instances took place earlier this week.

In a McDonald’s in Nanaimo a canister of pepper spray was deployed. The man discharging the pepper spray had been there earlier that night and had been in a fight with someone else. He left and came back a few hours later with a can of pepper spray. With a blank face he started to spray random people in their faces with the pepper spray.

Twenty people ended up going to the hospital due to the incident. Some of them were members of a local hockey team.

The police arrested the assailant as well as another man.

This attack with pepper spray was yet another in a string of recent similar instances. The police have been arresting the suspects and apparently most of them have been teenagers.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police made gave a statement about the recent outbreak of pepper spray misuses and within a week, the frequency of incidents dropped. The simple act of communicating the problems with the public seemed to raise awareness. Perhaps some people hadn’t realized what kind of trouble they could get in for misusing pepper spray.

Pepper spray is for self defense, not revenge. If you use pepper spray incorrectly, there are consequences.

The first case to be heard under the new law is against Roger Scherner who is charged with three counts of first-degree child molestation. The child, who is now 14, reported to both her police and her mother that Scherner forced the child to touch him and touched her sexually while the family was on vacation in Bellevue, Washington. The incident was reported in 2003 and authorities have been building the case since then.

When detectives began their investigation, they found a total of “nine other family members or family friends spanning three generations who said they, too, had been sexually abused by Scherner over the years.” Until now, none of them has pressed charges. In fact, a 49-year-old woman who says she was molested when she was very young stated that even though her family knew what he had done, they still socialized with Scherner.

On the stand, Mrs. Joanne Scherner invoked her Fifth Amendment rights in response to most questions. “He never told me what this whatever-you-call-it is about. He never explained himself.” However, she did say that following her husband’s arrest, Sherner said, “I’m sorry.”

The accused has made King County Jail his home since he was picked up in March by the United States Marshals Service. Scherner headed for Florida before his trial was set to begin. The arresting officers found him equipped with a loaded gun, wigs and foreign currency.

The statute of limitations, which varies according to the crime and from state to state, continues to be re-examined by lawmakers in many states. Suspects can be prosecuted for incest, child rape and child molestation up until the alleged victim’s twenty-first birthday, or seven years after the last incidence of abuse, whichever occurs later, in Washington State.

The Sexual Assault Resource Center, Stone and her staff, worked tirelessly to advocate for the change in Olympia. The issue of admissibility of past sexual offenses was a big part of the center’s legislative agenda.

According to Stone, “It makes a huge difference. Sometimes victims of rape and molestation do not have significant physical evidence of the abuse – perhaps too much time expired before the assault was reported, or the type of assault did not leave much physical evidence. The problem can be magnified in the case of children, who are often ‘groomed’ by the offender for years and subject to nonviolent molestation such as grabbing, touching, or rubbing.”

The current case involves charges of child-rape and child-molestation and asserts that Scherner molested a seven-year-old relative during a family vacation in Bellevue, Washington in 2002. Not surprisingly, Scherner’s defense attorneys did not want to allow the testimony of prior alleged victims during the pretrial hearing phase.

In June, the first case to be heard under the new law began. The current case deals with the 2002 rape of a seven year old. More than another half dozen family members have come together to testify that 79 year old Roger Alan Scherner raped or sexually molested them in the past forty years.

King County, Washington Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Julie Kays encouraged a forty-nine year old woman to testify about the time when Scherner “approached and raped her while she was spending the night at a relative’s California home.”

The woman had not told anyone of the abuse because of the confusion, fear, and physical injuries. Meanwhile, the statue of limitations ran out. Scherner, who has been accused of rape and child molestation over several decades, was never prosecuted – or even charged. The new state law permits the woman’s story to be heard as part of the effort to prosecute Scherner.

One of the problems in dealing with child molestation, or even rape, is that there may be very little physical evidence – so little that it is difficult to construct a solid case.

These events began to unfold only a day after two Tasers were received by each of the state’s eighty local commands. So far a total of about four hundred officers have received the training, which is required before they are allowed to carry a Taser. Part of the training program includes having each officer experience the shock delivered when he is hit by a deployed Taser. At this point, an additional 1,500 officers are slated for training in the near future.

Prior to this point, only members of the police riot squad and the elite tactical operations units were armed with Taser X-26 weapons.

Whereas handguns were once the order of the day, especially when settlers were busy “taming” the Wild West, today’s requirements are different. In the past, besides just repelling borders, settlers had to shoot their own food and deal humanely with injured livestock and domestic animals. Firearms, both short- and long-barreled, handled the needs of our forebears.

The needs of today’s citizens are much more along the lines of personal protection and home security. Therefore, the need for ready accessibility is skyrocketing. To improve their availability to ordinary Americans, especially women, Taser International is now marketing some of their products through home parties reminiscent of the Tupperware parties of the last century.

Radio Shack, one of the long-standing staples in electronic retailing, is now looking into offering stun guns (not the projectile-shooting Tasers) through its storefronts. Mt. Orab, Georgetown, and Bethel Radio Shack locations have looked into carrying stun guns and now believe there is a ready market. Store manager James Colwell said he believes parents who are preparing to send their kids off to college might feel better if they sent along some non lethal protection.

Colwell also said he believes everyone has the right to personal self defense. He said there are no local laws preventing the sale or use of stun guns but that it is up to the customer to do the research if he or she takes the device “outside of the area.” Colwell also said there will be a minimum age requirement which much be met before a purchase can be completed.

Many have advocated hazardous duty pay for teachers in high crime areas and in divisions of special education dealing with the most dangerous (or potentially dangerous) students in the entire school district (emotionally handicapped and severely emotionally handicapped).

All too often the parents and other relatives of emotionally unstable students are in no better shape, themselves. Many teachers have been threatened or found that their personal vehicles have been damaged or sabotaged on or near school property.

Beyond that, teachers are routinely assaulted, not to mention insulted, by students and parents. In such dangerous situations, slightly built faculty or staff members may well need additional power to provide safety for themselves and other students.

However, doesn’t it make more sense to arm teachers with non lethal weapons like stun guns which wouldn’t be lethal if stolen and used against other students or staff? The addition of power could make a life or death difference. Non lethal power keeps it safer for everyone involved.

This comes on the heels of a surprising rise in deaths of people on whom the weapon has been used in the last week: four men in the United States and two in Canada. The committee specifically referred to the use of the Taser X26 by Portuguese police. An unnamed expert testified to the committee that use of the weapons had “proven risks of harm or death.” The U.N. committee said that "The use of TaserX26 weapons, provoking extreme pain, constituted a form of torture, and that in certain cases it could also cause death, as shown by several reliable studies and by certain cases that had happened after practical use."

The controversy over Taser usage in the United States has been on the rise, especially due to several well-publicized cases in which police used the well-known Tasers to disable suspects.

Nevertheless, Tasers are still far less lethal than conventional firearms – less lethal, in fact, than the average baseball bat when wielded by an ordinary adult. Should baseball bats be banned, too?

Think about it.

Find out not only the laws where you live but also the direction of recent court cases.

Some time ago it was legal to apply deadly force in protecting one’s home when a would-be assailant   merely set foot on private property. In recent years elderly women have been prosecuted for using the same force against a perpetrator who not only entered the home but made it all the way into the bedroom.

The state of Michigan prohibits the use of pepper spray stronger than a 2% concentration. Furthermore, only one Tear Gas type is allowed and there is a size restriction on the container. Some companies offer products specifically designed for use in the state of Michigan.

In Wisconsin, only pepper spray is allowed and the concentration amount can be up to a 10% solution. Not only is there a size restriction, but there is also a safety feature requirement.

Some years ago the state of Florida worded the laws governing conditions under which it was acceptable to carry weapons (firearms) in vehicles in such a way as to make it virtually impossible to have a gun in one’s vehicle without having a concealed weapon permit. For a period of time the number of permit requests soared. Once the wording problems with the law were addressed and the permits expired, considerably fewer of the permits were re-upped.

While some women (and men) are great in a crisis, keep cool and respond appropriately instead of react wildly, others may not do as well. Make it a point to talk through possible scenarios and explore a variety of responses.

If you are not comfortable with a firearm, arm yourself with a non-lethal alternative. If you are not comfortable with a weapon as powerful as a TASER, back down to something like a stun gun or, even further, to pepper spray. Whatever you choose, you need to be reasonably sure you are willing and able to take the appropriate action.

While driving a car is a privilege, there are attendant responsibilities to abide by the laws of the road AND to operate the vehicle safely and courteously.

The moral of the story is that the better informed you and your neighbors are, the more likely you are to support each other in times of need and the less likely you are to be on the receiving end of unwanted legal attention.

Opponents of his position point out that a citizen’s first and most fundamental right is the right of self-defense; a right which has been granted to U.S. citizens from the time that laws were first written. And armed citizens who are permitted to carry their concealed weapons have assisted in their own protection as well as others in case after case. Perhaps what alarms self-defense proponents the most is the flawed notion that by disarming the public, they will be protected by law enforcement officials who are authorized to carry arms. This idea is flawed because in Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C. Ct of Ap., 1981), court ruled that police do not have an obligation to protect you.

One way to avoid being caught defenseless should Senator Obama become our next elected President and enact his vision of gun control is to exercise your right to own and carry a non-lethal self-defense weapon such as a stun gun, Taser, pepper spray, Mace, or other similar product. Your right to protect yourself need not be revoked should our next President enforce laws that restrict the sale and use of arms.