Kubotan

Its popularity grew from 1969 to the 1970s when Kubota, at the request of California State Senator Edward M. Davis, the former Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, created the weapon and began training female officers in its application.

The principal targets in self-defence include bony, fleshy, and sensitive parts such as knuckles, forearms, bridge of the nose, shins, stomach, solar plexus, spine, temple, ribs, groin, neck, and eyes.

A typical pain compliance technique involves seizing an attacker's wrist and sealing both hands around it with the length of the Kubotan laid across the radius bone.

[2] In April 2010, actor and entertainer Darren Day was found guilty of possessing an offensive weapon, namely a kubotan-style keyring, by a court in Edinburgh.

Because a Kubotan is just a rod made of a hard material, any restrictive regulation would most likely be ambiguous and undefined due to the ability for any common item to be used in a kubotan-like fashion.

Over time the registered name "Kubotan" (sometimes erroneously spelled or marketed as "Kubaton") has been eroded and genericized to include many knockoffs and imitations of the original design.