The Rapid Containment Baton (RCB) looks more or less like another popular telescoping baton made by a company with a three-letter name. There are several distinctions, however. The most significant is how the weight of the baton is distributed. Conventional collapsible batons are weighted toward the handle end. If you extend the baton and put your finger underneath it at the midpoint of the shaft, the baton will fall handle-end first. Do the same thing with an RCB, and it will fall business end first. When holding an RCB and the other brand by the handles, the RCB feels heavier because the weight is extended away from you. Turn the other brand around and hold it by the tip, and they feel the same.

The idea behind this is that the inertia of a baton strike should be focused at the distal end of the baton, the end furthest from the officer's body. I'm hardly proficient at this, but when striking a training dummy with both batons, I felt like I was delivering a lot more oomph with the RCB. And if you can deliver one or two effective strikes, you might not have to deliver any more.

The RCB's manufacturing process differs in the way the telescoping tubes are crafted. The conventional method is to take a tube of the diameter that most of the part will end up, and flare the end that will accept the next largest tube in the telescoping assembly. This produces an end with a thinner wall than the rest of the tube, and a corresponding weak point. Peacekeeper starts with a tube of the same diameter of the flared portion, but with a thicker wall. They then machine the outer portion of the tube so that the larger end has the same inner diameter as the rest of the tube, but a larger outer diameter. The result is a sturdier tube less likely to fail.

According to Phil Tanzini from Peacekeeper, 87% of the nation's law enforcement agencies require their officers to carry and impact weapon. His company's product is experiencing ever-larger penetration of that market as they realize the RCB is a more effective weapon.