Taser parties - for all your zapping needs

Miss Shafman, 35, is on a mission to persuade the fearful, but fashion-conscious, women of America to pack 50,000 volts of self-defence in their handbags.

"This device has changed my life," she told a room full of women in suburban Miami last week. "I no longer live in fear. I challenge you all with one question. How will you defend yourself if you’re attacked?"

The Arizona entrepreneur deployed her sales patter and folksy western charm as she praised the merits of the palm-sized C2 stun gun – available for $350 in a variety of fashionable colours, including the best-selling "hot pink".Sixteen women, aged 18 to 58, sat and listened at the home of a Miami business couple whose pastor, a self-confessed gun fan, invited Miss Shafman to give her sales pitch to the women, most of whom attend his church.And as with any good Tupperware-style party, after the talk and the demonstration came the chance to test the wares.

The evening ended with the women sizzling away at an aluminium foil target as some of their husbands sat in the garden, smoking cigars in the balmy night air.But first Miss Shafman, who set up her Shieldher company to market so-called "Lady Tasers" last year, talked about her own fears as a woman living alone in Phoenix.

She had previously slept with a baseball bat by her bed and later a knife stashed under her pillow before she fell in love with the first stun gun marketed directly at women."The Taser is my seatbelt for life," she enthused. "There is now no longer any day when I believe I am going to get raped or assaulted."