Dean Weingarten has a good find at Ammoland.
Judge Eduardo Ramos, the U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of New York, has issued an Opinion & Order that a ban on stun guns is constitutional. A New York State law prohibits the private possession of stun guns and tasers; a New York City law prohibits the possession and selling of stun guns. Judge Ramos has ruled these laws do not infringe on rights protected by the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution.
Let's briefly…… [read more]
A bear seems to have made itself at home in a Chatsworth neighborhood and one homeowner captured some of its antics on video.
Dr. Alon Antebi told FOX 11 the bear has wandered the neighborhood since Labor Day.
The bear was seen cooling off in the pool and even hopping into the jacuzzi.
But Dr. Antebi says the bear also raids their outdoor kitchen and spills beer from the fridge.
There’s also concern that the bear is getting more aggressive.
“Yesterday we were having morning coffee and he came up literally three feet away from our glass door, our dogs started barking so he ran off, went into the pool, then jumped the fence.”
Animal control has told Dr. Antebi since he lives in the bear’s natural habitat there’s not much they can do unless the bear becomes more aggressive.
“Unless the bear becomes aggressive”!?! So sorry, once you’re dead, we’ll come to help you.
One article said it was a Grizzly. But in LA? Despite the color of the bear being light brown to tan, the body type is not that of Grizz. Blacks can range in color. Size can be deceptive. What do you think: Ursus americanus or Ursus arctos horribilis? Or maybe the Mexican Grizz isn’t really extinct?
I don’t know where this was. I paused the video enough times to see that he was using a pistol. I’m guessing that this was a sow with two cubs on the larger end of things and felt a bit threatened.
A man in the ski town of Steamboat Springs, Colorado shot and killed a black bear that entered his home in the middle of the night. According to the Colorado Department of Parks and Wildlife (CPW), homeowner Ken Mauldin dispatched the bruin with a .40 caliber Glock handgun after it opened and walked through an exterior door.
“The door was unlocked, and it’s one of the older-style lever door handles. So, the bear pushed on that to get the door open,” CPW public information officer Rachel Gonzalez tells F&S. “[Mauldin] was alerted when his wife screamed. It was just after 2 a.m. when we received the incident notification.”
Three things pop into my mind.
First, this is yet another anecdote that justifies carry inside the home.
Second, this anecdote justifies closing and locking the door.
Third, that’s a lot of rounds. Nine rounds to put this bear down. This advocates for accuracy or high capacity, or preferably both.
We’ve got some big, bad boys back East too. Be careful in the bush. Carry a large bore gun with you when you venture out. I take it the only thing that stopped this fight was the fact that they were too winded to carry on.
Watch the video, but here is my analysis (the comments on YouTube are idiotic).
The caption says, “wild horses.” Eh, maybe so. I don’t know. There’s a salt/mineral block in the video, so it isn’t completely a wild herd. No commenter points this out. In any case, this is their neighborhood. They know their way around.
Second, the horses are barely at a lope. I know. I have trained horses. They can keep this speed up – and much faster than this – for far longer than the bear. The bear is heavy. A large portion of the musculature of the horse is dedicated to doing just what they’re doing. The adult horses are in absolutely no danger. They just chose to run rather than fight because that’s the easiest thing to do. It’s all instinctive. There was no calculus.
Third, the reason they’re loping is twofold. They won’t waste energy if they don’t need to, and they’re probably protecting the foal. That foal is likely in danger, but that’s the only horse in danger.
The bear is in danger too. If the horses decide to make a fight of it with the bear (assuming the bear catches up with the foal), one strike from a rear hoof will crush the bear’s skull. Even a glancing blow would break his jaw (killing him) or cause internal injuries (causing organ failure). A horse kicks much faster than a rattlesnake strike, and delivers 2000 psi pressure. Don’t ever underestimate a horse’s ability to kill. I know cowboys who were centimeters from death from a potential head blow.
I repeat. The herd is in no danger. The foal is in danger. So is the bear, so that bear must be very hungry.
Hiking with kids can be a unique experience, especially when there’s a black bear following your family up the trail. Last week, Brighton Peachy, her husband, and their three young children were hiking a popular trail in British Columbia when a black bear started following them, according to KUTV News.
While the bear appeared to be more curious than aggressive, it blocked the way back to the parking lot so the family of five—with kids aged one to six—had to keep walking up the trail as the bear lumbered along behind them. Peachy was able to record a video of the encounter with her cell phone.
Video at the link.
He has his wife and children on a hike through the wilderness of British Columbia, and he had bear spray.
A U.S. Army soldier was killed in a fatal bear attack while on a training exercise in Anchorage, Alaska, Tuesday. The soldier, whose name is being withheld until family is notified, was part of a small group from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson (JBER) operating in Training Area 412 west of the Anchorage Regional Landfill, according to a statement from the base.
Initial reports have not indicated what species of bear was involved in the attack. A video on the JBER website that urges caution in dealing with a heavy bear presence shows both black and grizzly bears on the base, which covers 64,213 acres of coastal lowlands surrounded by high mountain chains, mostly consisting of wild areas dotted with lakes and swamps. Hunting and fishing are allowed on the base, and access is managed through the use of an online registration system. Training Area 412 was closed to the public after the incident, which is Alaska’s first fatal bear attack of 2022.
It is unclear whether the soldier was equipped with bear spray, or if their unit supplies the spray to all of its troops. A packing list for students at Alaska’s Cold Weather Leaders Course, the region’s premier school training soldiers to survive in the area, does not include bear spray.
The base news release says nothing about cold weather training, but of course it does say that he perished in training.
What do we make of the Military.com report? Are they sending Soldiers out to train in the region of the country most densely populated by bears without carrying means of self defense? Are they doing that? Do they not trust them with handguns?
Before I graduated from high school, I overheard the older brother of a close friend talking about shooting a bear. The bear had been discovered in a den, during the Wisconsin deer season. As I recall, in 1968, such a harvest would have been legal.
The older brother was a Vietnam veteran. He approached the den with another vet. The brother suggested the other vet poke into the den to see if the bear were still there.
The other veteran said no, he would not do it. The brother said, well, in Vietnam, you went into holes to get Charlie.
Whereupon, the other veteran said: yes, but I had a different rifle then. (speaking of the M16).
He considered the M16 a superior gun for close-range bear defense than the common 30-30, whether Winchester 94 or Marlin 336.
At the time, I thought it strange someone would prefer a .223 semi-automatic rifle to a 30-30 or larger caliber rifle.
50 years and considerable time investigating actual defensive shootings of bears later, my opinion has become less certain.
Of the defensive bear shootings I have found, four of them were with rifles reasonably characterized as semi-automatic civilian versions of popular military rifles.
All four defensive shootings were successful. Modern sporting rifles most commonly are AR15 or AK47 style semi-automatic rifles. They are the most popular rifles in today’s America. It is certain more bears will be shot with them in the future. Here are the four incidents …
I would absolutely feel safe anywhere in North America with an AR-15, including against bears, as long as I had a standard capacity magazine full of ammunition.
