I’m conscious of being the only ‘soutie’ in Cabine du Cap’s neck of the woods in the Montagu mountains. The farmers in the Talana valley have all sorts of toys, from tractors and motorbikes to moustaches and guns.

I’ve done my best, with boreholes and solar and reservoirs and woodwork (just finished a chicken coop, thank you very much), but then the other day Phil down the road told me about his Magnum and said he was a great shot.

I felt immediately left behind, again. I vowed to work on my ‘shot’. But first, I needed a gun.

I don’t have a gun (sorry, ‘firearm’) license and don’t really want one. Nor do I want an actual gun in the house. So I chatted to Mad Rory, in Constantia, and he directed me to what he believed was the most hardcore gun you could get, legally without a license, in South Africa. That’s when I ordered the Byrna.

Watch this:

Quite mean.

Now whilst I have been working on my shot, it turns out this little Byrna is an incredible self-defence weapon, and I must admit there is an added element of comfort I am enjoying.

Besides inflicting serious brute force pain on someone, you can also swap the solid balls you saw in the video above, with balls filled with an extremely debilitating gas concoction – rendering anyone who comes near, absolutely legless.

Check out this video. The whole thing is very interesting, but if you want to see the damage it does to the human body, try from the seven-minute mark:

On their website, they have a wide range of different products available, with this just a snapshot:

For a touch over R5 000, I think this is a winner for self-protection, without having to get a gun license or have a lethal weapon in the house.

Like me – I’m a lethal weapon.

At least now I can use words like ‘recoil’ around my farmer mates AND I’m a better shot. Oh, AND, I’m safer!