Are Extreme Speed and Accuracy Necessary to Defend Against Bears?
A fair amount of the time, yes. 13 Cases which meet your criteria, out of 174 total, were found when the linked article was written. There were some cases where the mere gunshot stopped/deterred the attack, without killing the bear. Those are not counted in the 13 mentioned.
There were a couple of cases where the victim stopped the attack by shooting the bear *after* they were injured. In the vast majority of cases, the situation was not a surprise attack at close range.
I know you are the expert on this topic. But this universal display of trigger happy folks scares the hell out of me. Everyone wants to be a Dick Cheney.
We all know them and have interacted with them, and we whisper only to ourselves because we don’t want to discourage ownership, but some folks should never carry a firearm let alone chambered all the time. Their practices and habits are going to kill someone someday.
Unintentional discharge is a very real thing... And it happens because of being cocked, locked, loaded, and trigger happy. These kind of foolish accidents do not help the argument in favor of gun rights at all.
I wonder how many humans have been injured because someone was too quick to think they were a bear?