I engaged in a search for instances where pistols were used to defend against bears. I and my associates have found 37 instances that are fairly easily confirmed. The earliest happened in 1987, the latest mere months ago. The incidents are heavily weighted toward the present, as the ability to publish and search for these incidents has increased, along with increases in bear and human populations, and the carry of pistols.

The 37 cases include one that can fairly be described as a “failure”.

Living in western Montana means bears (and mountain lions, some wolves, maybe a wendigo or sasquatch). I don’t get out in the hills nearly as much as I used to, or want to, but in over 35 years I have run into bears exactly twice. First time I had my HiPower with me and I did, in fact, feel undergunned. (Although the accompanying article shows that FMJ 9mm actually acquits itself nicely.) Second time I had a rifle and felt a bit more confident.

Most people’s knee-jerk reaction to bears is a .44 pistol and I’m no different. I picked up a lovely limited-edition Ruger specifically for bearbusting. What I think is a better choice is a Glock 10mm longslide….the Model 40. While .44 Mag is no slouch, the G40 holds two-and-a-half times the capacity at less weight. But, really, any gun is better than no gun.

The article goes on to mention that handguns succeeded in stopping bear attacks in about 97% of the reported cases. In several the human simply fired a round or two two scare the bruin away…in others, the bear had to be dissuaded in a more terminal way.

Bear spray? I met the guy who invented it years ago. True story: for a while the bear spray could not be marketed as such because it had not been proven to be ‘safe’ to use on bears. BUT it could be sold as people spray for use against criminals because there was no requirement to show it was safe to use against humans.

I seldom carry bear spray. I already have too much crap hanging off me when I’m running around in the woods. I’m not inclined to do an escalation of force in the few seconds I have between being a bears target and being a bears lunch. I ‘d go straight to the nuclear hand grenade if I had one. Until I get my Glock20 I’ll carry the Ruger .44 with some rather penetrative hard cast bullets.

For those of you who wonder about the efficacy of handguns vs. bears this article should prove interesting. But, keep in mind that a handgun is never the first choice if you have the option of using your rifle.

I picked up a KE Arms polymer AR lower a few weeks back. Palmetto was having a deal on a lightweight pencil-barrel upper with bolt carrier and charging handle. Well, why not? Put it together the other day and it is pretty light. Threw it on the scale and it came in at a touch over 5.5# with open sights. Its my understanding that if you spend the bucks and get a genuine WWSD rifle you drop the weight down to almost 5#. Thats about the same as an M1 carbine. And it’s about a pound lighter than a military M4 with 14.5″ barrel.

Gotta say, that poly lower seems pretty slick. I had heard good things about the old Cav Arms lowers and these are supposedly quite improved over them. I need to head to the range this weekend and dump a few rounds through it and get it sighted in, but it’s pretty nice.

Although I have a bucket full of stripped lowers sitting here, I think I might need to pick up a half dozen of these lowers and put together some more guns. I rather like the lightweight nature and how all the weight is carried out front.

You know, just because you can (somewhat) get away with selling .223 at eighty cents per round does not mean that all the other crap on your table has commensurately gone up in value. For example, the Smith and Wesson Model 10 has not been invented that is worth $1050. And you can cover that 4″ Highway Patrolman with hookers and cocaine and it is still not worth $1150.

I bought nothing. Nada. Zip. At least….not until I swung by a local gunshop on the way back to town. And…this followed me back to the truck:

Its a polymer KE Arms lower. The foundation for Gun Jesus’ project gun – the WWSD rifle. Now, I’d love to have one of those WWSD rifles but I’m not dropping that kinda  coin. But I am interested in the monolithic stock/receiver idea. As you know Cavalry Arms started this trend and these stock/frame combos are the natural extension of that. The notion is that by switching to a polymer lower you get a substantial weight and balance advantage. While telescoping stocks are fine, I never do anything with them that i can’t do with a full stock. And, I rather like full stocks but didnt like the weight. This gives me thebest of both worlds.

While I’d like to have a WWSD gun, I’ll probably hunt around for an upper that does what I’m looking for and mate it to this lower. I’ve always thought carbine uppers on full-stock lowers were a good idea and I’d be interested to see if this combo gives me that advantage without the weight penalty.

Well nuts…I purchased that milled Norinco MAK90 with all of its mags, drums, and ammo with an eye towards dumping it on GunBroker. And then…I made the mistake of shooting the bloody thing and now I’m wanting to keep it.

This happens far too often.

On the bright side, I think I havent bought a Ruger P95DC in over a year so…yay me!

This was brought to my attention and I am giddy over it. I hope they don’t screw it up.

A couple months ago, just to be safe, I ordered some complete AR lowers from Palmetto. Price? $250 ea. Just ordered some factory blems, with Magpul stock/grips, for….$150 ea.

Things are changing, guys.