This tool has the best origin story of anything I’ve made, so let me tell it.

I was working at my computer when the phone rang — a Mr. Sergeant, calling from the UK on behalf of Jon Ronson, a journalist and BBC/Channel 4 documentary maker who’s genuinely famous over there. He had questions. The first: could I set a person on fire just by staring at them? “No,” I said. The second: could I kill a goat by staring at it? “Why would I want to do that?”

It turned out Ronson was making a documentary about the First Earth Battalion — a real US Army program that explored unconventional human-potential ideas — and I was connected to that world. I arranged to get him onto Camp Pendleton to film me, because the Defender lined up with a lot of First Earth Battalion thinking. That work became the Channel 4 series “Crazy Rulers of the World,” and I’m in part one.

Ronson got a firsthand look at the Defender, and it made a real impression on him. Later in the shoot, in front of about eighty Marines, I demonstrated moving him across the Amtrac museum floor with one finger. The Marines were laughing so hard at how wary he was that I had to get the head of the schoolhouse, Lt. Col. Chris Houser, USMC, to quiet them down so I could actually demonstrate the principles.

A few months later I was working on a new model and hadn’t named it yet — so I went on Ronson’s UK radio show, showed the tool, and we ran a naming contest. Listeners voted, the winner took home one free, and that’s how the Ronsonator got its name.

As a tool, the Ronsonator is built for reach and control. The dual long points give you distance and leverage. The nose notch lets you push an attacker off you. The finger notch and the sawtooth grip area let you counter and control a grabbing hand. And the digit-capture hole gives you a functional stop — capturing a finger or thumb so you can control the situation long enough to get clear. It pairs with our Kydex holsters for fast carry and has lanyard holes for everyday options. At just 1.5 ounces it carries easily, but it’s a serious, capable tool.

And the story didn’t end at the documentary. Ronson wrote it all up in “The Men Who Stare at Goats” — I’m in chapter eight — and the book was later adapted into the film of the same name, with George Clooney starring. I got to go to the opening, which was a thrill.

As with every Defender, the Ronsonator is meant to stop a threat and get you to safety — never to punish — and to be used within the limits of legal self-defense.