Investigators learned that Thomas showed up at the business and began an altercation with someone inside.
OKCPD said during the altercation, Thomas swung a knife at the person who then shot Thomas, killing him.
At this time, investigators believe this is a case of self-defense. The case will be presented to the Oklahoma County District Attorney’s Office.
An attempted armed robbery that ended in a gun battle between the suspects and the owner of a jewelry store has shaken those who live and work in an Oakland neighborhood so much that they are calling for an emergency meeting with police and their local council member.
Just after 10 a.m. Monday morning, employees of MSM Jewelry at International Boulevard and 42nd Avenue were walking in, preparing to open the shop for the day when two suspects burst through the door, guns drawn.
The owner of the store said he shot at the suspects, and they fired back multiple times in an incident captured on security camera video. No one in the store was hurt, but the owner said he may have hit one of the suspects.
This is just the latest in a string of violent armed robberies in the city's Fruitvale District.
Semi-automatic pistols have come to dominate the handgun market in the United States of America. In 2021, there were 6,751,919 pistols manufactured in the USA. Those numbers include single shots, double barreled, and bolt action pistols, but the vast majority of them are semi-automatics. There were 1,159,918 revolvers manufactured in the United States. The majority of the revolvers were .22 caliber.
The ATF reports 737,374 pistols of .22 or smaller caliber were manufactured in the USA in 2021. The same report says 781,246 revolvers of .22 or smaller caliber were manufactured in the United States in 2021. 2021 is the last year in which individual manufacture numbers have been reported to the public by the ATF. .22 caliber revolvers are holding their own in competition with semi-autos. Here are the companies which are making .22 revolvers in the USA and the number they reported making in 2021.
1. Heritage Manufacturing Inc., 100 Taurus Way, Bainbridge, Georgia. This wholly owned division of Taurus, USA, makes the revolvers in the large, new Taurus manufacturing facility in Bainbridge. In 2021 they reported making 491,882 .22 caliber revolvers.
2. Sturm Ruger & Company, Inc., 529 Sunapee St., Newport, New Hampshire. Ruger, seeing how successful the Heritage line has been, has brought out some competition with their Wrangler revolver. Ruger has a complete line of quality .22 revolvers from the LCR in .22 to the GP100 to the new version of the Single-Six, the Single-Ten. In 2021, Ruger reported making 209,258 .22 caliber revolvers.
3. North American Arms Inc., 2150 S 950 E, Provo Utah. The mini-revolver is offered in many variations by this long term revolver manufacturer. They reported producing 57,142 .22 caliber revolvers in 2021.
4. Standard Manufacturing Co. LLC, 100 Burrett St., New Britain, CT. The company has increased its presence in the revolver market with a five shot .22 mini-revolver. It has had the S333 Thunderstruck double barreled revolver. Standard Manufacturing reported making 11,208 .22 caliber revolvers in 2021.
5. Smith & Wesson Sales Company, 1800 N RTE Z, Columbia, MO. It was surprising to see Smith & Wesson produced only a bit more than ten thousand .22 revolvers. Smith & Wesson produced the first .22 revolver in 1857. It was an instant success. They have been producing .22 revolvers, including many iconic models for 166 years, with a few different owners of the company along the way. Smith & Wesson revolvers have become priced at the high end of the revolver market. Smith & Wesson reported producing 10,310 .22 caliber revolvers in 2021.
All other manufacturers of revolvers in 2021 reported less than 1,000 revolvers made. They are not included in this article.
ATF reports of the manufacture of firearms, to the public, lag two years behind the calendar dates. This is to preserve proprietary information for the benefit of the manufacturers. 2021 is the latest data available.
The ATF, before the Administration of President Biden, normally reported the numbers of firearm imports each year. For some unexplained reason, those reports have not been produced for 2021, or 2022. It is a little early to expect the 2023 report. Revolver imports by Taurus and Rossi (owned by the same company), are a significant part of the .22 revolver market in the United States. As of 2020, Brazil is reported as exporting 849,700 handguns to the United States. The vast majority of those handguns would be from Taurus and Rossi. How many of them are .22 revolvers is not reported.
Rimfire revolvers have significant utility because rimfire cartridges are not quite as reliable as centerfire cartridges. When you have a misfire with a revolver, a different cartridge will be brought to fire by the normal function of a revolver. With a semi-auto, a person needs to clear the misfire before the handgun can be fired. Most of the utility of a .22 handgun can be performed by either semi-autos or revolvers. Many .22 rimfire revolvers can easily be converted from .22 LR to .22 Magnum. Such revolvers can handle everything from .22 CB caps to .22 Magnum cartridges, adding versatility.
Simple revolvers can be made as cheaply, or even cheaper, than semi-auto handguns. A huge chunk of the .22 revolver market in the United States is at the least expensive end of the market. .22 revolvers are an inexpensive way to gain the utility of a .22 rimfire handgun.
.22 revolvers are here to stay, and will continue to be made in the United States for the foreseeable future.
©2024 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.
Gun Watch
"I opened my door like a deer caught in headlights. We make eye contact and I was like, oh you’re right here," she said. "To almost knock a door down like that, you have to be really raging."
She thought her door was going to be knocked down.
"It was going to come down. I saw it bend in, like bend, not break or crack, just bend. That’s when I was announcing already, ‘Hey, I got a gun, I got a gun. Get away from my house.’ Then, I shot. I fired," she said.
She fired two shots and missed, but it was enough to scare the man away. She was shaken, but she was alive.
She called the police.
"It’s not the shooting range. It’s real life. What went through my head was, ‘This is a stand-your-ground state, this is a stand-your-ground state, so you can defend yourself, Jenelle.' I’m just aiming, and I’m like, 'He’s coming in, you can defend yourself, Jenelle.’ It took a lot of courage to do that," she said.
Canada has some quirky laws about what firearms are easily available, and what are not. They are often more restrictive than the laws restricting firearms in the United States. In one area, Canadian gun laws are less restrictive than in the USA. Manually operated shotguns, designed to be fired from the shoulder, are not limited in barrel length. Shotguns which have barrel lengths as short as 9.8 inches are available in Canada for sale as unrestricted firearms. In particular, there is the Tactical Imports SS-211, which has barrels of 9.8 or 12.2 inches in length, with an overall length of 23 inches and a weight of 4.5 lbs. In this Youtube video the legality of the SS-211 is explored and a few shots are fired. The shotgun retails for $499 Canadian. The SS-211 offers a way to easily transport a gun for defense against wild animals on Canadian wilderness trips.
The SS-211 is highly restricted in the United States.
The obvious solution for a frugal Canadian would be to cut down the barrels of an existing, inexpensive double or single barrel shotgun. Unfortunately, Canadian law only allows short barrels which were made short at the factory!
Canadian law has a category of non-restricted firearms. This class includes any rifle or
shotgun that is neither restricted nor prohibited. From the RCMP website:
Most common long guns are non-restricted, but there are exceptions.
Exceptions include prohibited firearms and restricted firearms. Restricted firearms are:
What's included in this class
- Handguns that are not prohibited firearms
- Firearms that:
- are not prohibited firearms
- have a barrel less than 470 mm in length
- are capable of discharging centre-fire ammunition in a semi-automatic manner
- Firearms designed or adapted to be fired when reduced to a length of less than 660 mm by folding, telescoping or otherwise
- Firearms of any other kind prescribed to be restricted firearms in the Regulations
The website does not say, but the barrel length limitation only applies to firearms "capable of discharging centre-fire ammunition in a semi-automatic manner". It does not apply to manually operated repeaters, single shot or multiple barrel long guns.
Factory shotguns with short barrels such as the Mossberg Shockwave do not meet the Canadian requirements to be a non-restricted firearm, because they lack a shoulder stock.
The Kel-tec KS7 and KSG shotguns meet the Canadian requirements for non-restricted long guns . Both have barrels right at the 470 mm mark. They have overall lengths of more than 660 mm. They are 26.1 inches long, nearly 663 mm. The KS7 weighs only 5.9 lbs, making it highly portable. Both shotguns offer an alternative to "conventional" rifles and shotguns.
The KS7 meets the overall length requirements and the overall barrel length requirements. It holds seven rounds, is easy to use and reliable, by numerous reviews.
If you wish to have the least burdensome and most effective protection while in the Canadian wilderness, the Kel-tec KS7 may be a good choice. It may be the firearm which is the least trouble to carry and have ready. It can be slung across the chest, easily available. Permits for handguns are very difficult to obtain.
The Kel-tec shotguns appear to be popular in Canada. When listed, they sell out quickly. Canadian prices appear to be about $800 - $900 for the KS7, considerably more for the KSG.
Non-restricted shotguns and rifles and ammunition are easy to take into Canada. They must be declared at the border. A $25 fee is required.
The KS7 has been on sale on AmmoLand. In September, Kygunco offered them for as little as $319, with free shipping. As a gun to carry on a Canadian wilderness trip, it is a viable option.
©2023 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.
Gun Watch
APD says during their investigation they learned 46-year-old Jamie Davis and his girlfriend were asked to leave the game room. A game room security guard, identified as 35-year-old Deondre Flint, walked out of the game room as well.
Police say that's when Davis' girlfriend got into a fight with a female employee of the game room, which led to Davis shooting Flint. Another security guard then shot Davis, according to police. Both Davis and Flint were pronounced dead at the scene. A third person was also taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening gunshot wounds.
Joseph A. Dawson, 48, of Berea, his wife Katherine Dawson, and her family member, Phillip Fox were having a verbal argument.
While Joseph was inside the home Katherine made threats to kill both her and Fox.
Joseph exited the home grabbing a machete and Fox retrieved his gun and fired the weapon at Joseph.
A video of a polar bear attack which was repelled with a couple of long sticks or pipes has been going viral, on and off, for three years. It seems to have first appeared in 2020. Some sites claim the event happened in Quebec, Canada. Any help in identifying the location and person/people involved would be appreciated. The video is 12 seconds long.
The site seems to be a research station of some type. There is an antenna mast, probably for communication, at the upper middle of the images and a rectangular shelter with a door at the corner and what may be an instrument or communications mounting stub coming out of the roof at the left upper corner.
The charging bear is wary of the long pipe/stick which the man is pointing at the bears nose/chest. The long objects are likely some type of light metal pipe or conduit, because of their uniform width, length (about 10 feet), and straight geometry. There is a dog in the video, which appears briefly on the middle left side.
The man with the poles/pipes shoves the end of the pipe at the charging bear, which is abruptly putting on the brakes as it is hit by the pipe/pole. After retreating, the bear comes back. The man swings/flings the second pole at the bear, which hits the bear on the front legs. The bears retreat, and we do not see them any more.
Consider if the man had a spear instead of the pole. The bear could have sustained a deadly chest wound if the man had used slightly different tactics at the beginning. If he had waited a fractional second for the bear to get a yard/meter closer, and thrust into the chest cavity the blow could easily be deadly. This video helps explain how the Russian sailors were able to kill 10 polar bears with lances/spears while they were shipwrecked on Svalbard in the 1740s. The sailors did not have a dog, but they had each other. A thrust from the side with a spear would be deadly.
Polar bears tend to be solitary, except for sows with a cub or cubs and pairs of bears during mating season. It is unclear which this pair is.
A spear/lance thrust to penetrate to the lungs/heart of a bear is the best chance for a deadly strike. The heart/lungs are protected by the ribs/sternum, so a blade needs to be able to reach about 1-2 feet into the bear to inflict a deadly wound, or to make more than one wound. The heart and lungs on bears are further back than on deer, and closer to the midline of the body. Any good hole to both lungs will probably kill the bear, often as quickly as a hole in the heart.
We do not know how the video was filmed. The frame follows the action, but smoothly, and with limited travel. It might be held by another human, or remotely operated from inside the cabin/shelter.
From study of the descriptions of polar bear predatory attacks on humans, this is a typical sort of polar bear attack. Because the bears are not familiar with the strange human prey, they do not charge all-out, but are wary of possibly being injured, a form of prey-testing.
This gives humans a good opportunity to ready a weapon and mount an effective defense.
©2024 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.
He then heard noise coming from the backyard. He went to the back door and confronted an unknown man. The homeowner told police the man ignored commands to leave and started walking towards the homeowner.
That's when the homeowner fired a single shot at the man.
Neither the victim nor the homeowner have been identified.
The woman said she shot and killed her boyfriend while he was attacking her inside the apartment Thursday night.
"He was strangling me, and I tried to push him back, but he was getting stronger and just more physical and that's when I fell back, and he was just lunging towards me. I don't know because he will just start wailing off on me and so, I just shot him," explained the woman.
She said over the course of their relationship, she's gotten five no contact orders and an order of protection against him.
Update, 4:50 p.m.: Police said the man suspected of trying to break into a Northeast Tacoma home was armed with a firearm and pointed it toward the home’s occupants before he was shot by the homeowner.
The 52-year-old man is suspected of attempted burglary, Tacoma Police Department spokesperson Det. William Muse said in an email to The News Tribune. Muse said the man broke one of the home’s windows and tried to manipulate a door to get inside.
Muse said the homeowner shot the man in defense of himself and others in the home. No one inside was injured. The police spokesperson said the shooter was cooperative and was not arrested. The investigation is ongoing.
In the debate about effective defense methods against aggressive bears, some people claim extreme speed and accuracy are essential to stopping a bear attack with firearms. Here are some quotes.
From Efficacy of Firearms for Bear Deterrence in Alaska:
The need for split-second deployment and deadly accuracy make using firearms difficult, even for experts.
Many experts seem to favor bear spray. One drawback of firearms they cite is the inability of many shooters to make accurate, quick-kill shots under the extreme stress of a bear attack.
From backcountrychronicles.com:
If you shoot something as big as a grizzly bear and are not lucky enough to penetrate their skull or clip the spinal chord on the 1st shot, it might just piss them off. The average elk can run 100 yards after a double lung shot, so how long do you think grizz can continue to whip your ass before it dies? The bear will eventually die, but you will still die first.
This argument appears to be based on conjecture and myth, with very little data. Most readers have access, over the Internet, to the same data as this correspondent. All cases where a handgun was fired in defense against a bear, which could be documented, are included. This was done to prevent selection bias. There are 174 cases which have been published so far. They are all available on AmmoLand, most with links to original sources.
To test the theory of the necessity of a central nervous system hit, delivered very fast (roughly less than three seconds) the incidents were evaluated to determine if both a central nervous system hit was required and the hit had to be delivered very rapidly. Most people can learn to deliver shots on a close range moving target in under three seconds with a little practice. Upland bird hunters do it routinely. Many police basic shooting requirements, demand speeds of less than two seconds for two shots at close range, including drawing from a holster.
There were 13 incidents where a central nervous system hit was delivered very rapidly and stopped the attack. Here is a classic example from Alaska in 1969:
--when there was a sudden sound from the brush, combined with
a blur, and time abruptly froze:...a large dark shape in mid-air, teeth and claws, eyes out of a nightmare, my mind in a state of cold unnatural calm as two hands, right and left, met one grasping the other and then there was a loud explosion and I was rolling to the side, onto my feet, gun I did not recollect drawing in my hands, swinging onto target again, half-way through the trigger pull, double action as before...
--Only to realize I was looking down at the grizzly, that it was lying at my feet, dying, paralyzed by a shattered neck thanks to Smith & Wesson and one of the hot handloads my husband had made for me. There were five left in the gun. The rest were up at the cabin.
Dolly Walker, the woman who shot the bear in the incident above, said she would have had several seconds more warning if she had not been deep in thought, distracted, thinking of a painting she was working on.
There were 117 incidents where the attack was stopped by a hit or hits, without a quick central nervous system hit. Here is an example from Wyoming, 2010:
The person in the lead shouldered his Savage 99, chambered in .308, loaded with five rounds of reloads with 150-grain Game King bullets. The bear appeared only 15 feet from them. At 8-10 feet, he fired. The bear stumbled and went down, slightly to his right, at the edge of the road. As the bear started to get up, he fired a second shot and his partner opened up with the .41 magnum.
There were 21 incidents where warning shots were effective. Here is an example from Canada in 2010:
Mr. Lorenz lifted the gun and set it off, just four feet above her head. The shot was enough to startle the bear and make her turn in the opposite direction.
There were 8 incidents were warning shots were ineffective. Three of the four pistol defense failures fall into this category. Here is the recently discovered failure from 1986 to drive a polar bear away with warning shots:
Four days later and 4 km SW, a bear with a red stain on its forehead, which may have been the bear spray, charged a group of 12 people. The bear ignored both “cracker shells” and shots from a .44 calibre handgun. The people involved were forced to climb a nearby tower or enter an adjacent building.
No one was injured in the 1986 incident. The bear was not shot.
Several warning shot failures became successful stops when hits were made. Some cases fall in more than one category.
The remaining pistol defense failure could be considered a warning shot failure. It is unclear if the bear was hit by any of the rounds fired. It was not considered a warning shot failure because the shooter said he intended to hit the bear.
Miller managed to pull out his .357 Magnum revolver and squeeze off a shot, possibly grazing the animal. Then he fell onto his stomach, dug his face into the dirt and covered his neck.
The bear went for his exposed right arm, gnawing and clawing it and chipping the bone off the tip of his elbow. The attack lasted 10 to 15 seconds, then the animal lumbered away.
As Miller rolled over and was getting to his knees, the bear, only about 40 yards away, came at him again.
He managed to fire two more shots, but with his right arm badly injured he thinks he missed the bear. Then he lay still as the animal gnawed and clawed at him.
21 incidents did not include sufficient information to determine if a fast central nervous system hit was the deciding factor.
The reader may consider the incidents themselves and make their own determination. It appears successful stopping of bear attacks, without fast central nervous system hits, occurred (117 + 21) 138 times. Fast central nervous system hits occurred 13 times. Of the 151 recorded successful uses of firearms ( incidents without sufficient information not included), fast central nervous system hits happened about 8.6% of the time.
In over 90% of recorded bear defense cases with a firearm, where a pistol was fired, fast central nervous system hits were not required to stop the attack.
The only failure where a person was killed was the .22 pistol against a polar bear in the Svalbard Archipelago in 1995. None of the other three failures include evidence the bear involved was hit.
It is impossible to know the precise level of effectiveness of bear deterrents. Most uses of deterrents are never reported. Reporting is highly biased toward failures of bear defensive methods. Bear inflicted injuries and fatalities are widely reported. If a bear is shot at, and runs off, there is little to report. This means deterrents tend to be much more effective than seen in studies.
©2024 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.
Gun Watch
The Tuscarawas County Sheriff’s Office said they recieved a call from Dover-Zoar Rd. N.E. where a male subject told 911 operators that his son had attacked him and that he had shot his son in the leg.
Officials said when they arrived on scene they found that the son had reportedly come to the father’s residence next door and initiated an argument that became physical.
The father, who is 70, years-old, stated that he was knocked to the ground and then attacked again so he shot his son in the leg in self-defense, according to officials.
Bears have killed nine times as many people when bear spray is sprayed than when handguns are fired in defense against bears. Fatal bear attacks are rare and make the news. Powerful cartridge handguns became popular and relatively easily available about 1873. Bear spray became available in 1985. The ability to learn about and report fatal bear attacks has expanded enormously since 1960.
Data which are nearly impossible to obtain are:
Collections of incidents involving bear spray and/or firearms are inherently subject to selection bias and confirmation bias. Some of this bias may be subconscious rather than intentional. Selection bias is built into the ability to gather data about the subject. If no human is injured, there is little incentive to report successful defensive actions.
If a bear is sprayed and runs off, there is little to report and little incentive to report it.
If a bear is shot at and runs off, there is little to report and not much incentive to report it.
If a bear is shot and killed in defense, where legal hunting is allowed, it is often recorded as a hunting kill rather than a defense against bears.
Data on fatal bear attacks overcomes some of these issues. The bear attack was serious, because the person was killed. Reporting of fatal bear attacks is more reliable than for any lesser level of conflict. Fatal bear attacks tend to be investigated, and investigative reports may contain higher levels of information.
Most fatal bear attacks involve people who are not armed or who do not use what arms they have.
Over the last several years, this correspondent and colleagues have been collecting all cases which can be documented where a handgun was fired in defense against a bear or bears. The total number of cases number over 170, from 1890 to 2023. All documented cases are included to avoid selection bias. Only one case is known where a human was killed. This is the incident in 1995 in the Svalbard Archipelago. The defenders fired a .22 rimfire handgun in defense against a polar bear. One person was killed and eaten. Bear spray is not allowed as a defense against bears in Svalbard. Pistols of less than .44 Caliber are not accepted as sufficient for bear protection in Svalbard.
Nine people are documented to have been killed in incidents where bear spray was sprayed in defense against bears. Those incidents occurred from 2003 to 2023. Eight of the nine fatalities occurred in North America, where bear spray is heavily promoted, in the eight years from 2017 to 2023. The nine fatalities are:
2003: Vitaly Nikolayenko was killed and eaten in Russia. He was a famous bear researcher.
2017: Erin Johnson was killed near the Pogo Mine in Alaska
2018: Mark Uptain was killed in Wyoming
2020: Daniel Schilling was killed in Alaska
2020: Stephanie Blaise was killed in Saskatchewan
2021: Carl Mock was killed near Yellowstone Park in Montana
2021: Leah Lokan was killed in Montana
2023: Doug Inglise and Jenny Gusse and their dog were killed in Alberta
As agencies and institutions have promoted the use of bear spray as a superior deterrent compared to handguns, and firearms in particular, more bear attack fatalities have occurred with the use of bear spray. Seven of the fatal attacks appear to have been predatory attacks. The two exceptions are: Mark Uptain was a guide helping to process an elk when he was attacked; Carl Mock was attacked near a moose carcass on the border of Yellowstone Park.
As the use of bear spray has ramped up and been promoted in North America, the percent of people killed in incidents where bear spray was used as a defense has been remarkable. Since 2016, eight of 22 people killed by bears were killed in incidents where bear spray was used as a defense. The numbers are very small. Eight incidents of 22 over eight years is 36%. In the same eight years 45 cases were documented where people fired pistols in defense against bears, and there were no human fatalities.
It is impossible to know how many times pistols were fired in defense against bears in the eight years; or to know how many times bear spray was sprayed against bears as a defense during the same period.
The claim of bear spray as superior to handguns for defense against bears is not supported by the data on fatal bear attacks.
©2023 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.
Gun Watch
A day later, the homeowner who shot and killed the 22-year-old man inside his home in the 3700 block of Marseille Road is speaking about what happened.
Brent Smith says he had just returned home from the grocery store when he noticed a young man walking up to his house. He says he then saw the man pull a ski mask over his face.
Smith tells WRTV the incident happened so fast he didn't register what was happening until he had already been hit.
"He hit me in the head with his gun," Smith said. "I yelled out 'he is robbing me', thinking my neighbors would hear me."
Smith says he then began to wrestle with the intruder for his gun. During the struggle, the intruder's gun fired. At this time, the intruder began running out of the house.
PITTSBURGH — A man is in the hospital, and facing criminal charges, after he was shot while breaking into his ex-girlfriend’s home Monday night.
A criminal complaint alleges Devon Washington, 34 broke into the home on the 300 block of Burrows Street in Pittsburgh’s Terrace Village neighborhood around 10:30 p.m. Sunday.
The homeowner shot him once while she was on the phone with 911. He drove away after being shot, later showing up at UPMC. The complaint states he was shot in the right abdomen and was in critical condition.
On Sunday, March 24, 2013, a determined polar bear made a fatal error in the prey selection process. The six year old healthy male would not be deterred from getting at two humans in a cabin located on Svalbard (administered by Norway) at Hornsund on the island of Spitsbergen. Hornsund is the most southern fjord on the southern tip of the Island of Spitsbergen in the Svalbard archipelago, about 140 km south of Longyearbyen.
The incident was reported in newsinenglish.no in 2013. The incident is confirmed in the PBHIMS database obtained by AmmoLand, which includes many reports of polar bear attacks which happened in the Svalbard archipelago. In the PBHIMS database the incident is number 132. It has not been included in the pistol defense database before, because the type of firearm used was not mentioned in the PBHIMS.
From the two separate reports, several interesting facts are gleaned. This was the second time the bear was at the cabin on March 24th. It had been driven off with "several means" previously, and came back. The couple inside the cabin went to extreme lengths to avoid shooting the polar bear, which was forcing its way into the cabin through a window. They fired four warning shots. Their defensive firearm was a revolver, which most commonly hold six cartridges. After firing four warning shots, they would only have one or two shot remaining before the necessity of reloading.
Reloading can involve considerable stress when a polar bear is forcing its way into your residence. The incident is listed as self defense by both the Svalbard administration and in the FOIA database obtained by AmmoLand. This was considered to be a predatory attack. The couple, a man and a woman, were in their 40s. The most common revolver caliber used for bear protection in Svalbard is the .44 Magnum. .44 Magnum revolvers normally have five or six chambers in their cylinders. Firing five full power .44 Magnum cartridges inside a small cabin is likely to cause measurable hearing damage.
Not only did the couple fire warning shots, they also threw "lighted candles" at the bear. The phrase "lighted candles" may be a minor translation error, although translation from Norwegian to English is said to be fairly straightforward. Throwing a "lighted candle" does not seem to be a significant bear deterrent. Most candles will be blown out when thrown.
The picture taken under the authority of the Governor of Svalbard shows an open window, with what appears to be a sturdy shutter with a heavy beam below the window. Perhaps the shutter was torn off by the bear, or it may have been removed by occupants to allow more light into the cabin while it was occupied.
This is another case where an extremely rapid shot to the central nervous system was not required for an effective defense. Four warning shots were fired. The bear was forcing its way into the cabin, allowing plenty of time for an aimed shot. The shot proved effective at neutralizing the threat by killing the polar bear. The polar bear weighed 671 lbs (305 kilograms). It was a medium sized adult male polar bear. The bear was found to be healthy and in good condition with plenty of fat, sharp claws and healthy teeth.
The government of Svalbard recognizes .44 Magnum handguns as useful for protection against polar bears, although they do not allow them to be rented for the purpose. A more rigorous procedure is required to be able to carry a .44 Magnum for polar bear protection than is required to carry a high powered rifle. The use of bear spray and/or pepper balls is not allowed for protection against polar bears in Svalbard.
©2023 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.
Gun Watch
Blair is in rural Wisconsin, a few miles west of Black River Falls.
According to a press release from the Blair Police Department, dispatch received a call at 1:16 a.m. on Jan. 1 from a resident on the 900 block of Taft Street. The caller said a man had broken into her home.
The caller's husband confronted the suspect and shot him.
When police arrived on scene they found the door kicked in and the suspect laying on the floor in the garage.
According to officials, Mascotte officers responded to an in-progress home invasion at Pine Needle Drive just after 6 a.m. on Dec. 28. There, they located a teenage male suspect who was shot by the homeowner.
The suspect was treated by Lake County EMS before being transported to Orlando Regional Medical Center. Officials say he is listed in critical condition.
LITHONIA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) - A shooting was reported at a gas station in DeKalb County, according to DeKalb County police.
Police said a man was taken to the hospital after a shooting at the QuikTrip at 2776 Panola Road in Lithonia.
According to investigators, the man was trespassing at the gas station when he shot at a person. The person shot back, hitting the man. The man was then taken to the hospital, although there were no life-threatening injuries.
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