“It has definitely lived up to its name, I’ll put it to you that way,” Sean Caskey said, as he described his reaction to the Byrna HD.
Caskey recently purchased a Byrna after looking for a device for self-defense.
“I am a gun person, you know. I have guns but secondly, if I have to defend myself, I would prefer a non-lethal way instead of having to kill somebody, obviously,” he said.
Caskey said while researching his options, other less-lethal weapons seemed too big and difficult to conceal.
“I was a correctional officer at one point, so I have dealt with not necessarily a pistol but a paintball gun that put out pepper balls,” he explained. “This is a lot more versatile. You can wear it anywhere. It is hidden. You can conceal it.”
Being a gun owner, Caskey admits he was a little skeptical at first.
“It leaves you wondering if it was going to shoot properly,” he said.
However, he quickly changed his mind after pulling the trigger for the first time.
“When I first pulled that trigger, how quickly that projectile came out and not only how quickly, but it also traveled 20-feet, hit a wooden beam and then ricocheted back towards me. Probably almost at the same velocity so it was an eye opener,” Caskey said.
The “testing” of his Byrna didn’t stop there. He recruited a friend to test out the Byrna HD Max projectiles.
“Me and him go back a long way, a very good friend of mine, we just like goofing off, having fun. He asked if he could swing by one day and I said sure, under the jokingness of telling him you know, yeah, you can come over if you take a Byrna HD Max. And to my surprise, he agreed to it,” he said.
He said his friend, RJ, showed up to his house in just a tank top and shorts ready to test the Byrna.
“I was like you, don’t want a t-shirt? You don’t want to cover yourself up? He actually took off his tank top and said we are going to do it bare skin,” he said.
The duo went outside, Caskey placed a new CO2 cartridge in the Byrna. He gave RJ the option to choose the distance, which was about 20-feet, and then he fired the projectile.
“He took it like a champ, right in the gut,” Caskey said.
“He tried to play it off, walk it off. He took his shirt and wiped his face and the minute that he made contact and rubbed that stuff in, his whole face went red. He started going to the hose, pouring water on his face and that wasn’t working. I brought him a cup of milk, he poured it all over himself, that wasn’t working,” Caskey explained.
As for how long it took RJ to longer feel the effect of the Byrna HD Max?
“I’d say roughly 30 minutes before he was actually able to come back and be like okay, I’m alright,” he said. “His nose was burning a little bit afterwards.”
When asked if he would trust the Byrna in a real-life situation, Caskey said, “being that not only did the HD Max round explode on impact from 20-feet and still produce that cloud, even closer for someone who is actively attacking in self-defense, I would trust that 100 percent. It has definitely lived up to its name. I will put it to you that way,” he said.
