Your Cart is Empty
Is the D.A.D.® 2 a weapon, an instrument of torture, death in a can and worst of all, a potential liability?
The following is not intended to belittle or insult any organization that may adopt destructive policies, but only to point out how misinformation can easily lead to such policies and actions.
We understand there might be confusion and misinformation that is influencing people to make misguided and destructive decisions, unknowingly. We hope this will help bring a little clarity to this important topic and that people who are making such decisions will rethink those decision that impede rather than support safety for women and specifically those supportive measures and products that target the reduction of rapes, beatings and abductions.
There are many organizations, starting with families, friends, churches, schools and their teachers, social workers, mentors, coaches, politicians and others in positions of influence.
This article does not focus on the great efforts and positive actions being implemented by those individuals and organizations striving to change human behaviors that lead to assaults, rapes and murders. Nothing is more powerful and permanent than changing the hearts and minds in ways that lead to love and respect for all. That would eliminate most of societies problems, at least those crimes and evils committed by people.
Where the D.A.D.® 2 comes into play is when all of those efforts have failed and a person or group elects to assault, rape or kill someone.
The D.A.D.® 2 is the last line of non-lethal defense, when all else has failed and the attack is in progress. There is nobody that can stop it from happening, not even the person being attacked. Whatever is going to happen, whether serious injury, rape or death, it is going to happen right then, unless the person being attacked can stop the attack long enough to get away to safety.
The reason we will be focusing on whether or not the D.A.D.® 2 is classified as a weapon, although non-lethal, is because it puts it in a category of products that instill fear in some people, not fear of the product, but fear of legal liability, even though that fear is completely, 100% baseless. So, the first objective is to classify it properly.
Should companies like Facebook and Google ban it because it violates their policy on “weapons?” Could bad guys use it to wreak havoc everywhere? Should its distribution be stopped, at all costs, even at the cost of lives? Is there banning of the product justified?
Has it become political fodder, where allowing its use designates you as good or bad, right or left, smart or stupid?
Is it better if the targets of rape or other violent crimes are forced to fend for themselves?
Is someone concerned that using a D.A.D.® 2 on a rapist would be excessive force? Are advertising channels concerned that the rapist might sue them?
Are they concerned that the user might get pepper spray on themselves and sue everyone for pain and suffering?
Here are some thoughts to consider.
An average University with 10,000 females has an average of just under one rape a day reported. Many are not reported. What is being done to stop those rapes? What can be done? When all else has failed and the rapist has made the decision to rape, the intended victim is usually the only one that can stop it. The only thing that matters at that point is stopping the rape. You cannot provide bodyguards to every student to be with them 24/7.
Should we give them all guns and tell them to keep their gun in their hands, with the safety off? Would that be better? Well, many think it would because nothing could be worse than just allowing it to happen, then saying afterward, “Isn’t that terrible. Something needs to be done about this.”
If you carry a gun, especially if you are a women, Emily at Style Me Tactical has a lot of great carry options. We are certainly not anti gun, but we are anti-ignorant and super pro-non-lethal personal protect, always as an option, even if you carry a gun.
Definition:
WEAPON: any thing used, designed to be used or intended for use (a) in causing death or injuryto any person, or (b) for the purpose of threatening or intimidating any person and, without restricting the generality of the foregoing, includes a firearm.”
So, weapons are designed to cause death or injury.
Definition:
INJURY: Injury is defined as a “wound, bruise, cut, gash, laceration, scratch, graze, abrasion, contusion, lesion.”
Here is a post promoting self defense weapons. Notice that all of them are designed to injure or kill.
The D.A.D. does not “injure” anyone. It does not cause any of the above results, not a single one. So, if it is not a weapon, what is it?
It is a non-lethal self defense device. Let me give one analogy.
Let’s say we were in Iraq during the war. There is a checkpoint through which only non-combatants can pass. The problem is that it can be very difficult and potentially deadly to determine who is and who isn’t the enemy.
Let’s say a car doesn’t stop and tries to run through the checkpoint. Depending on the level of security risk, the level of response will likely vary.
This example does not have to be a military base. It could be many locations where bad guys might be motivated to do bad things.
Anyway, in this case it’s a checkpoint in Iraq. This actually became a real issue at one point and likely still is in many places. You can read about it here. but I will summarize. In some cases, it was Kamikaze jihadists driving vehicle-borne IEDs with the sole purpose of killing as many as possible. For refugees fleeing an advancing army, the motive was different, but the action might appear the same. Soldiers would see the vehicle advancing and put up their hand with the palm forward and yell “Stop”. This was completely ineffective resulting in several vans with refugee families in them being shot up, according to the article. The vehicles would keep coming, causing the soldiers to use lethal force to stop them. The soldiers did not know that particular [gesture] was the Iraqi symbol for ‘Welcome, come forward!' They were actually motioning people to come forward and then shooting them.”
Law enforcement officer’s and civilians will continue to experience many situations in which things are not as they appear, which is why non-lethal force options are so incredibly important.
In the case of the military, the Joint Non-lethal Weapons Directorate was tasked with finding non-lethal solutions. I have witnessed demonstrations of these technologies many times during demonstration days at various military bases in which I demonstrated the capabilities of the TigerLight, after which it was approved for use by the military and given a National Stock Number 6230-01-587-4665.
At the time the article above was written, they had implemented things like focused acoustics so the people in the car with the air-conditioning running and radio on could hear them talking from 600-700 meters away, accompanied by bright lights and other noises. If the vehicle kept coming, at about 300 meters they would experience loud explosions from flash-bangs (non lethal distraction explosives) and laser dazzlers would impede their sight without blinding them.
They could also start feeling an intense, prickly feeling, the military’s Active Denial System, or ADT. It uses 95GHz, or millimeter-wave radiation. The waves reach only a 64th of an inch into skin at a 1.5 nanometer spot. The military describes it as an “intolerable heating sensation.” It looks like a big satellite dish sitting on top of a Hummer. It was deployed to Afghanistan, but I do not think it was ever used.
At this point, they are done trying to convince the driver to stop, so they focus on incapacitating the car, not destroying it.
At about 200 meters the vehicle will go over a speed bump and a pair of electric fangs will attach themselves to the underside of the car, sending 150,000 volts into the undercarriage, disrupting the engine control unit and stalling the vehicle. The article goes on to say, “ It’s a last line of defense, aside from shooting the driver.
It halts a vehicle about as well as a net gun fired at a tire, but — unlike the net — it allows the car to be started up again and driven out of the way. Your vehicle is temporarily inoperable. Your vision and hearing are returning to normal. The stinging sensation on the surface of your skin has subsided. Physically, you’re fine. but you’re not getting past that checkpoint.”
This is similar to the what the D.A.D.® 2 does. The attacker is made temporarily inoperable, but not injured, killed or damaged.
The other option is to blow the car up with a Bazooka or some surface to surface missile. The soldiers might use their M4 carbines and try to kill the driver, disable the car, blow out the tires, etc., all actions that will likely kill or injure.
Someone might say that those are still called weapons, albeit non-lethal. Are they the same as what are generally referred to as “weapons” and defined as something that is designed to cause death or injury?” No, of course not.
Should the concern be the same, or should everyone do everything possible to promote their use for the betterment of society and our world.
These referred to above are defense devices, technologies designed NOT to injure or kill, but to stop an action without injury or death, even an unintentional action that might be the result of mental illness, drug impairment, miscommunication or misinterpretation of ones actions, resulting in a false impression that someone intends to attack and cause injury or death, just like the TigerLight D.A.D.® 2. TigerLights were one of the Joint Non-lethal Weapons Directorate’s first projects and were approved for use.
These technologies are the answer to the problems that weapons create. It is difficult to apologize for accidentally killing or severely injuring someone when it was not justified or necessary. It is much easier to apologize for temporarily incapacitating them.
So what does the TigerLight or D.A.D.® 2 do that would be of concern to companies like Facebook? Well, it humanely stops bad people or animals from beating, raping, killing, biting clawing or eating good people.
It does this by temporarily incapacitating them through temporary pain, causing the eyes to shut and causing momentary or temporary debilitating respiratory distress. In twenty years and thousands of uses, these temporary effects have not resulted in injury or death, but have only resulted in the prevention of serious crimes or acts of violence.
After 45 minutes there are no signs that the D.A.D.® or any other TigerLight was used, other than the police being able to detect the UV die on the criminal as evidence that he or she was the one who attempted to commit the crime. No wounds, bruises, cuts, gashes, lacerations, scratches, grazes, abrasions, contusions, lesions, bruises, or broken bones. No funerals or law suits.
Even though people and animals have tried to cause ALL those injuries to our TigerLight customers, the D.A.D.®2 or other TigerLights STILL have not caused any injuries to those attackers. That should be something everyone should be happy about, regardless of political persuasion, intelligence or lack thereof.
Well, maybe the lack of intelligence could be a factor. Or, perhaps it’s just ignorance and misinformation. In any case, it’s destructive. It’s terrible. It’s a gross injustice and it’s downright stupid.
There is no good that comes from restricting the distribution of the D.A.D.® 2, unless it is for a competitor with competing products, but that only benefits a small number of people and only financially, at the expense of thousands or millions who could benefit from a device like the TigerLight D.A.D.® 2 and other TigerLights and we have not even mentioned all ion the D.A.D.® 2’s unique and highly effective, proven capabilities.
Is there a concern that it is too much pain to inflict on the bad guy?
The truth is, they might get their feelings hurt. They will probably cry for a while, even the animals.
But, isn’t it interesting that we have never had a report of someone using the TigerLight to commit a crime. I was asked, facetiously, by a New York police officer at a conference, if I was concerned about bad guys getting the TigerLight. I said, “No, I think the state should donate them to all the bad actors so they will use them rather than guns, knives and fists. In fact, it is HIGHLY unlikely that a bad guy would spray a girl so he could rape her. In fact, one would be victim of a gang rape sprayed herself all over that they left her, unharmed. She was worried she did not have enough spray to stop them all.
We have also never had a claim of excessive force being used. It’s a little difficult when there is no injury.
We have only had thank you letters and calls from people thanking us for a product that saved them or someone in their family from something terrible happening.
I just went online and searched high-risk products from a liability standpoint. Here is one list on a page talking about product liability.
https://startingyourbusiness.com/what-is-product-liability-insurance/
…product liability insurance is especially important if you sell:
I don’t see the D.A.D. on there, or anything like it. I also do not know if this list is based on actuarial tables and the calculation of the likelihood of financial costs resulting from claims generated by the use of a product.
In fact, as I sit here at my desk, writing this, I look around and see at least ten products on that list, all of which you can promote and sell on Facebook, Instagram, QVC or Home Shopping. At least half of them could easily be used to cause wounds, bruises, cuts, gashes, lacerations, scratches, grazes, abrasions, contusions, lesions, bruises or broken bones, even death.
There are several things within arms reach, that if someone broke in and attacked me right now and I did not have a D.A.D.® 2 sitting right here, I would grab and use to cause wounds, bruises, cuts, gashes, lacerations, scratches, grazes, abrasions, contusions, lesions, bruises, or broken bones, in order to protect myself and others who might be in the house with me.
Although they would not be nearly as effective at stopping the attacker as the D.A.D.® 2 would, they would be ten times more likely to injure the attacker, especially a gun. In fact, our fists, fingers, elbows, knees, feet and maybe my teeth, would be more likely to cause wounds, bruises, cuts, gashes, lacerations, scratches, grazes, abrasions, contusions, lesions, broken bones or even kill the attacker.
Just having the D.A.D.® makes the attacker FAR, FAR, FAR less likely to be injured. It makes the person being attacked FAR less likely to be injured, raped or killed.
Our TigerLight products have been used by many thousands of law enforcement personnel and civilians for over 20 years. Have they EVER done anything other than humanely stop bad people or animals from beating, raping, killing, biting, clawing or eating good people?
No, they have not.
So, why are we prohibited from running ads on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube?
Is there a liability risk? I don’t think so.
Why have companies like QVC and Home Shopping approached us on six different occasions over the years to sell our product on their shows, only to have their “legal council” tell them not to? Is there a valid reason? Are there statistics to back us their concerns? Hmmmm, let my think....No.
The conversations that take place are almost comical. The people tasked with finding great products always come to us. I tell them that we spent a lot of time and effort the last three times, or however many it had been at that time, preparing the campaigns, making videos and all that goes with launching a product on a new platform, only to get right down to the day before the campaign launch and get a call telling us that “legal” put the kibosh on it.
Are their legal concerns backed by facts, evidence or actuarial tables? I don’t think so.
Why do even women groups whose mission is to protect women, voice concern over teaching women how to enhance their ability to defense themselves with a device like the D.A.D.® 2? What are they afraid of? Are they suggesting that only teaching them to use their own bodies to beat up their attacker, is a safer approach, an approach with less liability? Do they really believe that? If so, why do they believe that? Who told them that?
Think about it for a minute. A women gets attacked by a guy who is determined to rape her. Let’s just say he is a lot bigger and stronger. Maybe he’s drugged up. What would she have to do to him to stop him? We see fights all the time where two guys or even two women get in a ring and punch and kick each other hundreds of times and they keep going, so what is that woman going to have to do to stop that attacker? We would have to teach and train that woman, probably for a long time, to be able to have any hope of defeating that guy without a force multiplier. She would have to become extremely proficient and violent, breaking the knees, gouging out the eyes, damaging the throat and groin, attempting to cause serious injury in order to stop him, the same things I and others taught my daughters to do. So, how about gouging his eyes out, causing permanent blindness? Would that be safer from a liability standpoint? I don’t think so.
Listen to Bre Lasley tell the story of the attack on her and her sister. She hit him “where it counts” many, many times and she and her sister fought for their lives for a long time before Bre was stabbed four times. A police officer miraculously (not from 911) showed up and saved Bre’s life, killing the attacker. Bre is incredibly strong and luckily, she survived her injuries. She now speaks all over the country to women to help them avoid or prevent what she went through. Bre also now carries a D.A.D.® 2 and if you use her code, BRE15, you can get a 15% discount at tigerlight.net, along with free shipping, for a limited time.
Then there is little, petite, 18-year-old Kortney Blatter and her friend, Kaylee. They were also violently attacked, while in Italy working as Au Pairs. Kortney was able to incapacitate the attacker in a couple seconds, without touching him and without injuring him. He just let Kaylee go and fell to the ground, temporarily incapacitated. Her video account is found here.
Which situation is more dangerous? Which situation caused more harm? Which situation is likely to result in wounds, bruises, cuts, gashes, lacerations, scratches, grazes, abrasions, contusions, lesions, broken bones or death, to anyone?
Which situation would have more potential liability?
If someone promotes or teaches a self-defense class for the purpose of making women safe, which would create more liability, teaching them only hand-to-hand combat techniques, only to have them go out and get beat up or raped because the attacker was too big and strong and maybe also knew those techniques? Or, would it create less liability giving them a way to stop even the biggest, strongest opponent without even having to touch him, but only temporarily incapacitate him while doing no bodily harm and leaving no injury? That is what the best self defense instructors do.
I believe the latter would be the scenario more likely to create much less liability, death or injury.
So, are some people’s concerns backed by science? By studies? By actuarial tables?
Is the D.A.D.® even a weapon? No, it is not. That is clear.
In fact, after having our promotional videos for the D.A.D.® approved and then disapproved around thirty times, ostensibly due to the “weapon” question, we sent this explanation to Facebook:
Dear Facebook,
Our ads should not be disapproved. In fact, a number of our ads, after being approved, then suddenly disapproved, were re-approved after we submitted evidence that they were not weapons, as they should be. Then, they were randomly disapproved, again.
We have been a good customer for years and have been running ads, some with many millions of views.
We have even received calls from Facebook representatives congratulating us on the tremendous engagement our ads have elicited, generating literally thousands of passionate comments.
Note: One call from a top executive congratulated us for having the most highly engaged ad on Facebook. I wonder if it’s because people need and want it.
Suddenly, and without any significant change to our ads, they have all been “unapproved” citing the Facebook Policy on “weapons.”
Here is the ad:
First, and perhaps most importantly, the D.A.D.® (Defense Alert Device) is not a weapon, by definition of the Department of Defense and by most countries.
Our Department of Defense, in an official letter, pointed out that TigerLights are NOT classified as munitions, defined as WEAPONS and AMMUNITION.
The D.A.D. is legal in all 50 states without a permit or license to carry.
In fact, your Facebook policy states that we cannot “promote the sale of ammunition, firearms, Paintball guns, BB guns, or other weapons, including knives, daggers, swords, bows, arrows, knuckle dusters, and nunchucks.”
Our ads do not promote the sale of any of those devices and is not a weapon. One thing similar in all the above mentioned devices is that they are made to causeinjury ordeath, which is how a weapon is defined. The D.A.D. is not designed to cause injury or death and does neither.
Weapons are defined as: DEFINITION: weapon means any thing used, designed to be used or intended for use (a) in causing death or injury to any person, or (b) for the purpose of threatening or intimidating any person and, without restricting the generality of the foregoing, includes a firearm.”
Injury is defined as “wound,bruise,cut,gash,laceration,scratch,graze,abrasion,contusion, lesion.” The D.A.D. does not “injure” anyone.
The D.A.D. is not intended to and does not cause injury, but only momentary discomfort, that if left untreated, disappears completely in minutes, not hours, days, weeks or months.
In a study in Canada, pepper spray was determined to be the #1 safest and most humane use of force.
In fact, TigerLights have done NOTHING but save lives for the past 16 years. They have never injured anyone, but have ONLY been used to prevent injury.
In a major study at Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, It was used to stop 147 attackers without any injury.
It resulted in a 32% overall decrease in complaints of excessive force, resulting in no injuries, while arrest activity increased 11%. That is not what weapons do.
Neither TigerLight nor Facebook is promoting violence or the use of weapons by allowing the D.A.D.® to be advertised on Facebook, . Quite the opposite.
Our mission statement:
ABOUT TIGERLIGHT, INC.
TIGERLIGHT IS DEDICATED TO ENDING VIOLENCE THROUGH NON-LETHAL PERSONAL PROTECTION.
EVERY D.A.D. PURCHASE SUPPORTS ENDING VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN & CHILDREN OUR MISSION: STOP THE VIOLENCE #STAYBOLD
It is hard to imagine that the Founder of Facebook or its shareholders would want to penalize a company that has done nothing but reduce violence and save innocent lives.
Just a side note. Kickstarter and Indiegogo both had the same weapons policy, but Indiegogo recognized and acknowledged that the most educated professionals, including the US military, do not classify TigerLights as weapons, but as self defense devices, much like those devices mentioned above, designed to stop, but not to injure or kill.
Guns, knives, feet, knees, hands, baseball bats and even other less lethal devices can and do inflict injury or death and have done so. The D.A.D.® 2 has not. I’m pretty sure a beer mug is far more dangerous.
Once again, the D.A.D.® 2 is NOT a weapon, so please tell us what we can do to continue marketing this product on Facebook as we have been for years.
Of course, we did not get a positive response from Facebook, so we are looking for other platforms owned and run by those who might be interested in increasing public safety and reducing rapes and other violent crimes in our country and around the world, with non-lethal technology.
In the meantime, if you are a person or organization that is concerned about stopping violence, please use that influence to do good and help lead the misled and misinformed to make better decisions that will benefit us all.
In fact, please feel free to contact us at 435-671-3331 and we will work together to make a real difference. Enough with all the talk, fear and hypocritical expressions of concern. Let’s get something done.
Comments will be approved before showing up.
