Bear Spray Versus Firearms

 NOTE: I had to recycle this article, somewhat modified, because it's one of my pet peeves and an endlessly regurgitated Big Lie from the Left that I'm sick and tired of hearing. 

 

When it comes to protecting myself against bears, I personally prefer firearms. I’m not against pepper spray, mind you, which has indeed proven effective on a great many occasions. For people completely unfamiliar with firearms, pepper spray is a sound and effective choice. It certainly offers a great deal more safety and security recreating in grizzly country than waltzing around completely unarmed.

          I do believe, however, that all of the supposedly empirical “proof” of its effectiveness has been grossly distorted and highly over-rated to the point that it gives people a dangerous false sense of security.

            Some time ago, I ran across an on-line gun article which said, “Alternatively, 97% of bears are stopped with a 9oz. can of bear spray. Yep, I said it, bear spray. Comparing the percentages, a firearm should actually be carried as a second line of defense should the bear spray prove ineffective…I am a believer in math, so ‘I know’ that statistically the odds of survival will favor me should I choose the Bear Spray.”

Similarly, the United States Fish & Wildlife Service puts out a “Fact Sheet” entitled Bear Spray vs. Bullets. It makes such claims as, “…persons encountering grizzlies and defending themselves with firearms suffer injury about 50% of the time.” And, “…a person’s chance of incurring serious injury from a charging grizzly doubles when bullets are fired versus when bear spray is used.”

A recent letter to Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks’ Montana Outdoors magazine again repeated the famous 97% effectiveness claim on pepper spray, but upped to ante on firearms to you having a 57% chance of getting killed or mauled when using one as defense against bears.

If such was actually the case, the white man never would have made it west of the Mississippi and the Lewis and Clark Expedition would have suffered 100% casualties before they got to Great Falls.

Well, the advocates cannot possibly be wrong, since they have science and math to prove it, right? As the old saying goes, “Figures don’t lie.” That rather depends on the numbers, how they were garnered, and by whom. There are other old adages which are also apropos, such as, “Figures don’t lie, but liars figure.” And my personal favorite: “Torture numbers and they will confess to anything.”

          Although the pepper spray advocates always say studies or even numerous studies prove the effectiveness of bear spray, when you seek out this plethora of studies (plural) they pretty much boil down into a single study (singular) that has appeared in a couple of different forms. The 2012 study that started it all was researched primarily by BYU professor Tom Smith and author Stephen Herrero and published in the Journal of Wildlife Management under the title of “Efficacy of Bear Deterrent Spray in Alaska.”

          Mankind has been taking out bears with “modern” firearms (loosely defined as ones using self-contained cartridge ammunition) for about a hundred and fifty years, but pepper spray is a comparatively new invention. In wide-spread use for only a couple of decades, it is naturally more difficult to find and compile incidents in which bear spray has been used.

The authors found 72 cases of pepper spray use to include in the study. It is interesting to note that out of these 72 cases, 30% involved government personnel engaged in “bear management activities”, only 25 of the bears were considered aggressive, and just 10 cases involved actual bear charges and/or attacks. The majority dealt with curious or non-aggressive bears. On the other hand, 100% of the 197 bear vs. gun incidents chosen for the study involved aggressive bears and actual bear charges and attacks.

          Consider that the researchers found fewer than 200 incidents of bear attacks involving guns in Alaska over a 126-year period to counter-balance the pepper spray accounts. Nor were these incidents random samples; they were deliberately, carefully, and selectively cherry-picked.

A little digging found a 1999 study conducted by the Alaska Department of Fish & Game (Miller & Tutterrow) entitled Characteristics of Nonsport Mortalities to Brown and Black Bears and Human Injuries From Bears in Alaska. This study documented 2,289 cases within the State of Alaska of people using firearms to defend themselves and/or their property against bears during the period from 1970 to 1996. In this study, fewer than 2% of the incidents involved injuries to humans. One summary noted, “Most of the people shooting brown or black bears in DLP (Defense of Life or Property) circumstances indicated that no human injury occurred (98.5% for brown bears and 99.2% for black bears).”

Percentage-wise, that comes to only 1.15% of those who used firearms against bears being injured. That’s a helluva long way from the Federales’ “Fact Sheet” claim that you stand a 50-50 chance of injury or death by shooting a grizzly bear in self-defense.

It is also interesting to note that the Alaskan state researchers uncovered well over two thousand documented cases of DLPs over a period of just 26 years; that averages out to 88 attacks per year. Apply that average over a 126-year period and you could potentially have as many as 11,088 bear attacks to study. Examining 72 of those cases amounts to a statistical sampling of 0.65% which, no matter how I try to stretch it, seems to fall a tad bit short of proving anything with 97% certainty.

It was, however, personal experience that led to my own loss of faith in pepper spray. In the US Forest Circus, Department of Aggravation, we used to be required to take a yearly 4-hour block of instruction on the use of pepper spray in order to be “qualified” to carry it for protection in bear country. I recall most clearly the training session taught by a lady biologist. Pepper spray was much more effective than a firearm, she began, because an ex-boyfriend had taken her out shooting once and she wasn’t able to hit anything, thus proving that guns are ineffective. Since this was undoubtedly true from her personal perspective, I was willing to let that slide.

Other information during the training also made me go hhhmmmm. While the instructor claimed that pepper spray was indeed “proven” effective against bears (this occurred prior to the Smith-Herrero study), she admitted that it might not necessarily work against large felines, or canines, and legally could not be used as protection against two-legged varmints.

          When we went outside for the practical demonstration of pepper spray, the class became truly enlightening. The instructor unlimbered the canister of pepper spray which she personally carried on duty in the woods and let fly. Only a small bit of liquid substance oozed rather sluggishly out of the nozzle and dribbled down her fingers. She washed her hands thoroughly, broke out a brand-new can of pepper spray still in the plastic wrapper, and took another poke at it. This can sprayed for somewhere close to a good half a second before it just up and quit entirely. But the third can, also brand-new in the wrap, worked as advertised, spraying out in a fan-shaped pattern and thus “proving” its superiority.

          I, of course, had a huge problem with the whole one-in-three functionality rate. That did not inspire much confidence. I sure as hell wouldn’t advocate carrying a revolver if I could only count on two out of six cartridges actually going off when I dropped the hammer.

There was no wind that particular day, either. Knowing my luck, I always figured that if I ever had to use pepper spray it would be at the exact moment I was facing into a 40-mph headwind. Dispersion and/or blow-back due to wind can and does occur when using pepper spray, but I have yet to have a hardcast 300-grain .44 Magnum slug blow back on me in the breeze.

Lastly, I personally used USFS-approved capsaicin-based pepper spray in an attempt to haze a problem black bear out of a campground. On my first attempt, I sprayed the bear in the face out the truck window at a distance of 20-25 feet. This failed to impress the bear in question, a 2- or 3-year-old blackie that probably wouldn’t have weighed more than 150 pounds soaking wet. After being sprayed in the face, he snorted, shook his head vigorously, and ambled away in a leisurely fashion further into the campground. I headed him off at the pass and gave him another dose of pepper spray at similar range. This time he made a couple of sneezing noises, rubbed at his face and eyes irritably with a paw, then looked straight at me and growled. With a final snort he continued on his way, back into the campground, in no big hurry. A third application was mostly scattered by the wind, but the bear finally felt harassed enough to stroll unhurriedly off into the woods for the moment. He was back raiding the campground within the hour.

          If I were an academic, I could cherry pick my own personal statistics and author a study “proving” that pepper spray has a 66% failure-to-fire rate and has been proven in the field to be 100% ineffective against black bears.

          I am making no such ludicrous claims. Even I readily admit that such a small sampling is essentially worthless for the purposes of statistical proof. Why, that would be as ridiculous as, say, specifically cherry-picking a mere 0.65% of bear attacks spread out over a century and a quarter and claiming 97% efficiency.

          I’m not saying, nor do I believe, that pepper spray is worthless or ineffective. It is a viable and valuable option that can greatly increase your personal safety in case of a bear attack. It can work quite effectively and has most certainly been used successfully on a great many occasions over the past couple of decades. It has saved lives, both human and ursine. Especially for people who don’t know anything about guns, it is an obvious choice. Pepper spray certainly beats the hell out of walking around the woods completely defenseless.

          I am saying that, mainly for political reasons, the powers-that-be have intentionally and grossly over-stated the true effectiveness of pepper spray while deliberately denigrating the use of firearms.

          As Mark Twain wrote in his autobiography, “Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: ‘There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.’"

 

SMALL ARMS VS VEHICLES

 

 

The Gauntlet

Korea, Nov 28-30 1950

 

          By October of 1950 it seemed that the Korean War, begun on 25 June 1950 with a massive surprise invasion of the Republic of Korea (South) by the North Korean People’s Army, was all but over. American and ROK forces had just managed to hold onto the Pusan Perimeter in August but by September 15^th strong enough American and UN military forces had been gathered to launch two powerful counter-offensives by land and sea that soon became runaway successes. The North Korean capital of Pyongyang had fallen, the NKPA had virtually ceased to exist as an organized military force, and in places ROK and US forces had reached the Yalu River.

          Completely ignoring all evidence that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army had already joined the fight, General Douglas MacArthur announced and kicked off his “Home by Christmas” Offensive to take over all of North Korea. In spite of UN air supremacy, the Chinese had in fact already infiltrated some thirty CPLA divisions numbering well over 300,000 men into North Korea and were waiting to strike. When they did, their offensive completely destroyed some major UN units of up to divisional strength and sent the rest reeling southwards in retreat.

          The U.S. Army’s 2^nd Infantry Division was one of the American units that was hit hard. Two Chinese Corps of six divisions had hit and decimated the two weak ROK divisions on the UN 8^th Army’s far right, turning the line and outflanking the 2^nd ID, which was soon under attack from multiple directions. Hoping to surround and cut off the 2^nd ID completely, the PVA 114^th Division infiltrated through the mountains to get behind the Americans and sever their only route of withdrawal, the road from Kuni-ri to Sunch’on.

All Chinese divisions of the era were heavy on manpower and small arms, but very light in heavy weapons and artillery while transport was virtually non-existent. In order to move rapidly through the rugged, roadless mountains, the 114^th Division had to leave their few heavy weapons behind and rely entirely upon their organic small arms and light mortars.

The Chinese did not actually build physical roadblocks or obstacles on the road but instead created fireblocks. These consisted of hastily-dug field fortifications manned by troops firing small arms and machine guns. With the road on the valley floor, the Chinese could occupy the high ground on both sides of it and fire down upon it without fear of friendly fire casualties. As their small arms crossfire knocked out jeeps and trucks, the disabled vehicles themselves became roadblocks.

When the hard-pressed 2^nd ID began its withdrawal, it was thought that there was only a single Chinese roadblock covered by a small number of troops. Instead, most of the 114^th Division was dug in on the high ground on both sides of the road for a distance of a little over five miles. American GIs came to call this stretch of road as the “Gauntlet”.

It was the Chinese machine guns that wrecked the most havoc. The vast majority of them were emplaced at ranges of from 300 to 500 yards. The guns were positioned to fire at right angles to the road, generally limiting their fields of traverse to about 30-degrees, and since they were located hundreds of feet in elevation higher than the road itself they could only deliver plunging fire. Even so, their fire proved devastating. The first four American vehicles in the retreating column were tanks, which the Chinese did not open fire on. When the tanks reported no enemy contact, the groups or “serials” of soft-skinned wheeled vehicles started down the road behind them, at which point the Chinese opened up with everything they had.

Some light, mostly 60-mm mortars, were also employed, and the accuracy of the Chinese mortarmen was generally very good, but the troops moving on foot through the mountains had only been able to pack in a limited amount of mortar bombs. The 114^th Division had a small handful of bazookas, but Marshall indicates that only ten or less bazooka rockets were fired at the 2^nd Infantry Division’s vehicles. Nor did the Chinese forces possess or use any artillery or demolitions.

The Chinese infantry’s submachine guns, rifles, and light machine guns combined did not seem to contribute as much to the destruction as the 20-30 heavy machine guns used. These were primarily water-cooled, belt-fed Soviet M-1910 Maxim guns mounted on tripods or two-wheeled Sokolov mounts, firing the rimmed Russian/Soviet 7.62x54R cartridge.

The Chinese gunners seem to have been using standard Type D Heavy Ball, a boat-tailed, lead-core 185-grain FMJ bullet, along the with standard Type T 148-grain tracer bullet which had a higher muzzle velocity and was, despite its lighter weight, supposed to match the trajectory of the Type D ball out to 1,200 meters. No sources mention Chinese use of any kind of armor-piercing ammunition. Marshall’s official report on the action does mention a very limited use of “explosive bullets”, which most likely refers to the 160-grain Type ZP Incendiary Ranging Bullet. A cavity in the nose of the bullet, ahead of the lead core and contained within the full metal jacket, contained an incendiary mixture ignited by a high explosive primer. The old Soviet manuals say the Type ZP was used for fire adjustment and could be used against unarmored fuel tanks on vehicles and aircraft but also noted, “A bullet of this type, hitting personnel, has the same effect as an explosive bullet.”

Even with only ball ammo, the Chinese machine guns took a terrible toll. The U.S. 2^nd Infantry Division suffered 4,037 casualties and lost most of its heavy weapons and approximately a third of its wheeled motor vehicles; the 5-mile stretch of road through the Gauntlet was littered with roughly 500 destroyed or disabled jeeps and trucks, the latter mainly 2-1/2-ton Deuce-and-a-Half 6x6s. Of the American vehicles that did manage to make it through the Gauntlet, Marshall noted that only one truck did not have any bullet holes in it. The Turkish Brigade, ambushed trying to open the southern end of the Gauntlet, lost fully 90% of its jeeps and trucks. It was reported that at least 80% of these vehicles had been knocked out solely by small arms and machine gun fire using 7.62x54R ball ammunition.

The aftermath of the 2^nd Infantry Division running the Chinese “Gauntlet” at Kunu-ri; the road is littered with wrecked and burned-out jeeps, 2-1/2-ton trucks, artillery pieces, and even a Sherman tank.

          Despite the lack of armor-piercing ammunition, Chinese 7.62x54R fire even destroyed numerous American light armored vehicles, primarily self-propelled anti-aircraft gun systems that also delivered significant direct anti-personnel fire in the Korean War. These were the M16 “Quad .50” Multiple Gun Motor Carriage, based on the WWII M3 White halftrack, with a maximum of a half an inch (12.7mm) of armor on the sides and front, and the M19 Gun Motor Carriage, twin 40-mm Bofors AA guns mounted on the M24 Chaffee light tank chassis, with similar armor thicknesses on the hull and gun shields. Originally intended as anti-aircraft weapons, neither vehicle had overhead armor on the crew compartment or weapons turret, and both suffered heavily from Chinese ball-ammo machine gun fire fired from higher elevations.

 

Fast Forward to 5.56x45mm small arms and

Baghdad, Iraq, 2004

“Jason Gillis, a former army staff sergeant, first witnessed the M855’s shortcomings in 2004 on the streets of Baghdad. He was a squad leader with 2^nd BCT, 82^nd Airborne Division, on patrol when a vehicle began speeding toward his unit. After several warnings, ‘both of our M249s opened up instantly, forming a crisscross pattern of tracer that met at the vehicle’s engine compartment and windshield. Within seconds, riflemen and grenadiers were executing magazine changes while the vehicle kept rolling and finally stopped 10 meters from my lead troops,’ Gillis recalled in an email to Army Times. He is now a free-lance writer who often focuses on military small-arms issues. ‘Assuming the driver was most likely riddled beyond recognition, we were all astounded to see the driver emerge from the vehicle completely unscathed,’ Gillis wrote. ‘Closer inspection revealed that the M855 ammunition had failed to effectively penetrate the vehicles windshield despite the fact that over 400 rounds were expended at extremely close range and on target.’ Other soldiers say they like the M855 because it is lightweight, but wish it had more punch. ‘The idea of being able to carry 210 rounds [basic load] is quickly overshadowed by the fact that it takes more than one and even more than two rounds to drop the enemy,’ Staff Sgt. Charles Kouri, 82^nd Airborne Division, told Army Times”

Yet another Iraq veteran offered this observation: “I have had the opportunity to fire an M249 using 62-grain M855 ball ammo into moving vehicles. While eventually having an effect upon the drivers/occupants, the 5.56mm round leaves much (original emphasis) to be desired as far as stopping a small pickup truck heading your way at high speed.”