Look at the two images above. If these were deployed anywhere in your sight in public, how likely are you to be able to tell which is a 9mm hand gun and which fires projectiles delivering OC?
I only recently became aware of this company caller Byrna. In my opinion, having not fired any of their products, this is a dead on arrival concept.
Personally, on top of a gun, I do carry OC and a couple other non-lethal defense tools on me every day. I want non-lethal options to meet non-lethal threats. I'm not dissing OC as an option. It's usually effective; but, not always. Still, the OC that I carry looks like OC -- it doesn't look like a gun. If I pull my OC on a potential attacker, the attacker, and every observer knows that I'm not escalating to deadly force. If somebody shoves me, and I pull a Byrna in response, everybody around me is justified in assuming that I'm escalating deadly force. The person who shoved me would have a better justification to respond in kind. A third party with a gun could be justified in taking me out under reasonable suspicion that I was about to kill somebody. If Tamir Rice could be shot for having a toy gun that was mistaken for a real gun, how couldn't that happen to someone with a Byrna?
Traditional OC spray seems to be the better option in every way, especially because it can be had cheaply whereas the Byrna is almost $400. The CEO made the case that the Byrna pistol has the range to hit a target at sixty feet; but, that's a problem. You're not facing a non-lethal force threat at sixty feet. If your threat is sixty feet away, he's got a gun or a crossbow or some other lethal, projectile weapon. So, if you're shooting your Byrna pistol at somebody who is sixty feet away, you're either meeting deadly force with non-deadly force, or you're committing battery.
There have also been boasts by the company regarding the products sold to law enforcement. They've also coupled that boast with insistence that they don't want to replace guns.
Well, there's never been a high profile case of someone mistaking a gun for a taser and killing somebody, right? Kim Potter isn't still in recent memory, right?
As a civilian, since I don't walk around like I'm in a combat zone every day, there's no way that I would carry a Byrna on top of a gun for comfort and practical reasons in addition to all the others (it's hard enough to conceal my 1911 wearing jeans and a t-shirt). Even if I were to carry both, it's just an added possibility that I'll accidentally draw the wrong thing in the wrong situation. If it's an OC level threat, and I accidentally pull my gun and shoot him, I go to prison. If a guy is changing me with a knife or directly threatening me with a gun, and I pull a Byrna, I'm dead.
Now, there most recent "brilliant product is supposed to be non-lethal rounds to be fired from 12 gauge shotguns. These are real 12 gauge shotguns, not Byrna guns that are designed to look real. So, no matter how you put it, to use this product is to point a real gun at somebody.
How many people who own Remington or Mossberg shotguns haven't bought real buckshot or real slugs for their shotguns? What's the possibility that somebody might accidentally grab the wrong ammunition in the heat of the moment? After the whole Alec Balwin thing where someone, somehow, managed to put a real bullet into a gun that was only supposed to have dummy loads, how does it seem like a good idea to make this your non-lethal self-defense or home defense tool?
Shotguns are rightly, generally associated with home defense. Castle doctrine is actually something that exists in all states. Still, even in Arizona, you can't kill somebody just because he's in your house and you don't want him there. In general, you've either got people intentionality breaking into your house to do god-knows-what -- in which case, deadly force is usually justified; or, you've got a drunk dude who stumbled into the wrong house -- in that case, you wouldn't even be justified shooting him with the Byrna ammo.
There comes a point where finding a middle ground is a useless endeavor. If I'm gonna pull anything that looks like a gun on anyone, it's going to be because that person is gonna try to kill me or someone I care about if I don't, and I'll be damn ready to take him out. If a guy is just trying to rough me up a bit to show off to his buddies, the OC may come out.
For me, and I think anyone who really thinks about self-defense for more than a couple of ticks off an old, analog clock, it's hard to imagine a situation where a Byrna product is the optimal resource.