Stop, or I’ll pelt you with a piece of hard candy!

Until this summer, that’s all most women were packing when it came to heat. And then, out of the blue, just like bejeweled flipflops, cute, little, nonlethal weapons became the accessory du jour. We are suddenly in the midst of a small small-arms arms race. In one corner is the new, pink, purse-size Taser C2, a stunning mini-stun gun priced to zap, starting at $299. It came out in July. In the other is the new, pink, purse-size Avurt IM-5, a fab baby gat that fires five plastic pellets filled with artificial pepper spray. It goes on sale in mid-September, also for $299.

What a great moment to be a gal … pursued by an unsuspecting mugger.

“Our goal is to give women, especially, something more effective than pepper spray,” the chief executive of Security With Advanced Technology, Scott Sutton, said. His company makes the Avurt.

With a shooting range in tow, the Avurt sales team hit New York for a publicity tour this week. They parked the range — actually a converted Mack truck — outside the Grand Hyatt on 42nd Street, where it will remain until tonight. (Parking costs $5,000 a day, in case you were wondering.)

Visitors entering the truck are immediately confronted by a photo of a stocking-capped man and given their choice of weapons. Well, all the weapons are Avurts, but they also come in red, black, and blue (colors inspired by cell phones). In truth, the device looks more hairdryer than handgun, and it weighs a ton. Slipping it into your purse would be like packing a pewter banana.

It is, however, extremely easy to aim, thanks to a laser beam that shows you exactly where your pellet will hit. I blew Mr. Stocking-Cap away both times I tried, from maybe 20 feet away. Had I been using actual pellets, these would have exploded, spewing a powder 15 times stronger than pepper spray and leaving Mr. Stocking-Cap with two red, nickel-size welts.

These hurt, Avurt’s self-defense expert, Craig Burris, said — and he should know. “You have to test against a human target, because nothing else can represent human flesh and bone,” he said. About 35 times, that test flesh was his.

Chen Levy, a saleswoman at a nearby jewelry store, didn’t like the idea of shooting anyone. “I wouldn’t use a gun — it’s scary,” she said. Then she tried out the Avurt and hit the target, too.

“Something like this,” she said, “I would use.”

(“Very often, we get women who just don’t want to leave the trailer,” Mr. Burris said. “They just want to keep shooting.”)

What enthuses these ladies — I hope — is that while the Avurt is powerful, even painful, it affords protection that is not lethal. And that’s exactly what the Taser C2 has going for it.

“Law enforcement refers to it as ‘the missing tool in the tool box,'” a spokesman for Taser International, Steve Tuttle, said. “There’s a big void between pepper spray and firearms, so we filled that gap.”

Press the Taser trigger and two needle-sharp probes sink into the assailant. These are attached to wires that deliver an electrical current, disabling the attacker’s muscles.

Like his rival at Avurt, Mr. Tuttle’s job has included time as a human target, too. The various Taser models jolt a little differently, he has learned. But you wouldn’t notice, “unless you’re a Taser connoisseur — which I happen to be.”

While the Taser has been implicated in at least 100 deaths, according to reports by Amnesty International, whether the gun was responsible for those deaths is still undetermined. So far, the overwhelmingly majority of fatalities seem to have been those with high levels of drugs in their system or a history of cardiac problems. Mr. Tuttle claims that the Taser — used in 11,500 police departments nationwide — actually saves lives because it gives police an alternative to live ammo.

Meanwhile, the Avurt folks, whose professional model is used in about 3,000 police departments, claim that their gun is the safest. They also hope eventually to make it the smallest. How small?

“We call it the lipstick version,” Mr. Sutton said.

More saliently, when it goes on sale, the average New Yorker will only be allowed to carry an Avurt, and even that will require a background check. Stun guns are outlawed for civilians here.

Thus, while Taser is already gearing up for a busy Christmas season elsewhere in America, here in New York it will be the Avurt under the tree.

Or hard candy, of course, which is what I still prefer … for the time being.