My dad is one of those "worryingly concerned about self-defense" boomers and I got an LED/lithium ion maglite-ish flashlight last year for Christmas.

It still doubles as a bludgeon and it's rechargeable and puts out like 5k lumens, so while I didn't think I needed anything like it, it's quite handy if you live in the mountains like I do. Nothing scares off a couple coyotes or a bear like just blasting them in the retina with a high-end LED photon cannon (short of an actual shotgun with bean bag rounds like my neighbor uses)