Interesting news. Was this supposed bear attack recorded? Would the bear have been shot if Wayne Bosowicz had a firearm in his posession? There’s no mention of bear spray here, which has been proven by top studies to be more effective and safe for deterring bears.

I guess we will find out in a more general sense this summer what exactly people will do when they feel a bear “gets too close” this summer.

But Wayne Bosowicz, a seasoned hunter and licensed guide from Sebec, said Wednesday that he wished he’d been allowed to carry a gun when a bear confronted him in Yellowstone National Park two years ago.

Link

I know this really isn’t news to a lot of my western friends who don’t see what the big deal is with guns. But many people east of the Mississippi and west of the Rockies understand that when you get too many people with too many guns in small areas, bad things happen. Of course it’s not the gun’s fault. It’s the fault of people who don’t or can’t use common sense(or of course just violent people).

There’s a big difference between a guy hauling around a rifle in his pickup truck in Big Timber MT population 800, and a guy riding with a glove box pistol in northern Chicago as 1,000 kids just get out from school. I’ve always felt gun control issues should be local and based on population densities. As for the national parks, I will most definitely side with the anti-gun crowd on this issue. There are way too many “easy shots” in these places. Before guns, national parks had the lowest crime rates in the nation. There was never any real reason to allow guns back in. The system was functioning perfectly.

I also base my opinion on behavior I have seen in the national parks. I don’t what the exact cause is, but some people get a little rowdy once they get into the wide open spaces. We all feel considerably more freedom when entering our great and wild public lands. However, in some people this sense of freedom dissolves into recklessness. I know it, I’ve seen it.

On top of this, my main concern is for endangered animals. I feel we may see several situations in which a “grizzly bear got too close” and was gunned down by a hiker. The problem with that is everyone has a different definition of “too close”. And to be perfectly honest, most people who carry guns are simply people who are more frightened. The act of carrying a gun eloqently conveys this. The people carrying guns are probably going to have a definition of “too close” that would not really be that close at all. A heightened sense of fear to begin with being the primary reason for that definition.

I wish our ranger friends in the National Park system the best of luck in adapting to the strange new rules.