'Bean bagua'?

This must be a joke, right? People using bean bags to fend of an attack. Someone please tell me this is just a joke!
"Don't move! I'll just find my bean bag and throw it at you, you stupid man, you!"
Jeez...

Story:
Stay away from the bean bags. That's the advice of Randall Heller, a Hurricane Katrina survivor who's moved his self-defense classes from the Big Easy to the Old Pueblo.

"There's a 12-ounce bean bag that you're supposed to throw at somebody to make them stay away," says a disparaging Heller, whose first self-defense class in Tucson starts May 1.

Source