gwave47 wrote:Who is talking about Cooke City other than you Bob?
Umm, the incident in question occurred at a CG very close to Cooke City...
I am addressing the fact that every time there is a human/bear encounter and the human gets injured or killed everyone says its the humans fault for being outdoors and then argues that humans should not begin defending themselves with guns.
Have people here expressed that this was a tragedy for the people involved? Yes. Have people expressed regret that a bear had to be killed? Yes. Has anyone argued that the people deserved it or the bear shouldn't have been killed? No.
No, what people have said is that in grizzly country, there are risks that you have to accept or maybe you shouldn't go there. Then someone like you comes in with the guns angle, as if a gun is proven to be any more effective in preventing and defending against attacks than pepper spray and good sense (it's not). But some of you gun owners always seem to think that having a gun is some kind of, pardon the lame joke, a magic bullet. It's not. Unless you have the gun in your hand and ready to fire, you have no advantage whatsoever as opposed to someone with spray beyond the fact that the gun is lethal and the spray is not. And that's where the discomfort comes, and it's a discomfort shared by law enforcement officers in the parks and national forests, not just the tree huggers you want to portray us as-- if I get scared and spray a bear when it was bluffing or really wasn't threatening at all, it lives; if I shoot it, it dies (maybe). Or maybe, more likely, I wound and enrage it, all but assuring that I get killed. How are you going to know if it's a bluff or not until the bear's on you? That's why I prefer a
proven effective non-lethal measure. It's not infallible, but neither is self-defense with a gun.
I don't have a problem with guns-- my views on defending your home and yourself against criminals fall well into the right-wing category, for I disagree that you should have to wait until your life is threatened-- I, and others here, have a problem with gun nuts, the people who feel compelled to carry their guns everywhere and who go into their gun rants given any opportunity. We think they're paranoid or have issues with having to act macho or both, and that makes us not trust their stability and their judgment. And many times each year, some gun nut snaps and kills people or gets arrested while planning to, like the guy recently caught with a ton of weapons on his way to San Francisco to kill leftists after being stoked up by the Glenn Beck show.
You jumped into this thread with an agenda and created arguments people never made. You were not the first to express sentiments of your sort, but only you provoked such a strong response from multiple people. Why? It is because you served up an agenda-driven rant, nothing more.
So you and others like you can talk all you want about your training and how using a gun is the last thing you want to do, etc. Your rants reveal what's underneath, and that's why we don't trust you and wish you would stay away from us and the wilderness. I know some people who own guns, some of whom carry them, and they don't sound like you at all. They are almost as dismayed by people like you as they are by those who want to ban guns outright, for your types give them all a black eye.
I'm done "talking" with you; feel free to have the last word and call me a hippie or tree hugger or whatever some more. In my first post directed at you, I admit I provoked you, and maybe I should have taken a different tack, but I felt you were asking for it. Judging from others' responses to you, I was right.
Jerry L wrote:gwave47..............I also can't understand the point you're trying to make.
He has no lucid points in any of his posts, makes wild distortions, and creates arguments that people never made so he can fuel his rants; it is fun, and revealing, getting him going.