9 Cases where both Bear Spray and Firearms were used to stop Bear Attacks

By Dean Weingarten

U.S.A. -(Ammoland.com)- Many places on the Internet continue to claim that bear spray is more effective at stopping bear attacks than firearms. There is no objective source for these claims. They are mostly based on a spurious comparison of the deterrent effects of bear spray on curious or food seeking bears compared to a selection of bear attacks where firearms were present, and sometimes used. It is not a valid comparison. Author Dave Smith explains the problem:

Efficacy of Firearms for Bear Deterrence in Alaska and Efficacy of Bear Deterrent Spray in Alaska were 2 halves of a straw man argument designed to prove bear spray was more effective than a gun. The bear spray study only included incidents when people sprayed bears; in 27% of the gun incidents, people did not have time to shoot. Just 10 of 72 bear spray incidents involved charging bears. About 60% of bear spray incidents involved agency personnel spraying habituated bears in national parks–when brown bears were sprayed, the sprayer had back-up, a colleague armed with a 12 ga. shotgun. The “methods” for the gun study said the authors analyzed “bear attacks.” When you compare the …Read the Rest

Source:: AmmoLand