In case you don’t know you can legally purchase pepper spray in your state, I’ll tell you a secret: neither do retailers. The largest manufacturer of pepper spray isn’t even aware of who can legally purchase its products.
A couple of months ago, I was waiting in a security line for a concert when the guard rifled through my purse, and I had an all-too-familiar realization: I had forgotten to leave my pepper spray at home. As any self-defense weapon-wielding person knows, you can’t take pepper spray into a concert, club, or bar — basically anywhere you might go at night as a young person living in a city.
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Frustrated, but not wanting to miss the concert, I reluctantly gave up my pretty little purple pepper spray keychain and watched the security guard throw it into a garbage can filled with others’ futile attempts to keep themselves safe that night.
The next morning, I hopped on Amazon to order myself a new pepper spray. But when I tried to submit my order, I received an error message saying: “There was a problem with some of the items in your order. ... Sorry this item can’t be shipped to your selected address.”
The message gave me no valuable information about why I couldn’t order the safety tool — just that “there was a problem with some of the items in [my] order.” I had ordered pepper spray from Amazon without issue many times before moving to Washington, D.C., so I did some quick thinking and changed the address to my parent’s home in Florida. The error message went away. The message disappeared again when I changed the delivery address to Virginia and Maryland.
So why couldn’t I get it delivered to Washington, D.C.?
The Code of the District of Columbia says individuals may possess and use a self-defense spray “in defense of the person or the person’s property,” so long as it meets certain criteria — all of which were met by the pepper spray in my Amazon cart.
Sabre, my preferred brand of pepper spray, notes on its website that “all pepper spray items must be registered at the local police station” in Washington, D.C. And when I go to order the pepper spray directly from Sabre’s website, it notes: “State and local laws prohibit the shipment of this model to: AK, DC, HI, MA, NY.” Other retailers such as Bling Sting, Pepper Spray Store, and POM Industries also refuse to ship pepper spray to Washington, D.C., addresses.
The retailers seem to be ill-informed on Washington, D.C.’s regulation of pepper spray. In 2017, the Council of the District of Columbia repealed the requirement for individuals to register their pepper sprays with their local police station. And possessing and using pepper spray for self-defense purposes is clearly permitted by the code. So there is no reason for the shipping of pepper spray to Washington, D.C., residents to be prohibited.
For a city whose violent crimes have risen by 36% over the past year, Washington, D.C., needs retailers to get their facts straight; it would make it a lot easier for people like me to practice self-defense.
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A quick search through Washington, D.C.’s crime data paints a horrifying picture of what it’s like to live in a big city and why accessible self-defense weapons are so important. So, since Amazon wouldn’t let me ship pepper spray to my apartment, I figured I would look into other self-defense weapon options on the website. I found out that I can get a 25-inch machete, a set of throwing knives, an authentic katana, a compound bow, and a pocket staff delivered to my front door.
Thankfully, I had friends in neighboring states to whom I could ship my pepper spray. But not all Washingtonians have that same convenience. It’s time for the retailers to educate themselves on local regulations and get rid of these asinine restrictions that erode people’s ability to defend themselves and feel safer in an increasingly dangerous city and time. Or maybe, we should just carry katanas around the streets of our nation’s capital. Whichever is easiest.
Sofia Hamilton is a research associate at a Washington, D.C., think tank and a contributor with Young Voices, where she focuses on issues related to healthcare, housing, and welfare. Her work has previously appeared in the Orange County Register, the Sun Sentinel, and RealClearMarkets.