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Posted on 10/30/2026 4:45:35 AM PDT by marktwain
An official National Park Video shows double meaning, irony, and tragedy in screenshots.
On July 25, 2014, Brian D. Murphy used both bear spray and a .357 magnum revolver to stop a charging grizzly bear. He probably shot the bear in the face. The shot stunned the bear, stopped the charge, but did not kill the bear. Murphy shot the bear after it had charged through the bear spray. Murphy helped keep other hikers safe. He immediately told park rangers about the incident.
All the physical evidence was consistent with Murphy’s account. The bear had left by the time the rangers arrived, but blood and hair and DNA confirmed it was a grizzly bear. Murphy was not charged by the investigating officers. His firearm was not taken.
Two months later, he was charged by officers of the National Park Service. Murphy hired an attorney who took the case before the local federal judge and the local Assistant United States Attorney. The case was dismissed with predjudice on October 9, 2014, meaning Murphy could not be charged again.
On November 19, 2017, Glacier National Park created an official video titled: Using Bear Spray. The video is 2 minutes and 39 seconds long. According to the description, it is in the public domain.
The same two actors are seen in at least one other video where the uniformed actor is identified as “Ranger Simpson” and the non-uniformed actor identified as “Buddy”. They star in a series of videos created in 2017. Sam Simpson identifies himself as a ranger with seven years experience. The video was written and produced by Scott Holmes.
(Excerpt) Read more at ammoland.com ...
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Should have been: “It’s only effective if you shoot a bear in the face.”
I’d love to know why he was charged.
L
You know you are in trouble when you shoot a bear in the face with a .357 magnum pistol and the bear just looks stunned and then runs away.
My speculation is the administration at Glacier National Park wanted to set a precedent. The Park rangers never charged him until two months later.
It seems likely to near certainty some administrator ordered a ranger to charge Murphy.
It backfired on them. Murphy fought it and won, and set the opposite precedent.
I have tried to get an interview with Murphy. So far, no luck.
You know you are in trouble when you shoot a bear in the face with a .357 magnum pistol and the bear just looks stunned and then runs away.
Are You kidding Me ?
What an Absolutely Rediculous Joke !
That Video...
Is Dangerous.
Bear spray barely works on pink haired, fat ass commies at “No Kings” riots
“I’d love to know why he was charged.”
Nobody is allowed to walk around bare in a national park................😜
Maybe another bear came and ate him.
The same headline could be applied to any crime-ridden section of a city.
From Grok;
Roughly two months later, National Park Service officers charged him. The charge was discharging a firearm in a national park (a misdemeanor carrying a potential $500 fine). Federal law (post-2010) allows carrying firearms in national parks consistent with state law, but discharging them is generally prohibited in places like Glacier, even though self-defense claims can apply.
Lately I have been thinking about the dichotomy between lethal and non-lethal defense. This issue came into my mind with the advertising of the Byrna non-lethal impact weapon. The Byrna has a pepper ball and hard ball capability. The parallels are there, whether it’s in the outdoors or in the home domestic violence cases. The problem is having two separate weapons to deal with in a high tense situation. I wonder if a compact single weapon hip holster arrangement could be designed that would contain both options. The challenge would be packaging the two in a compact setup. Perhaps one is already out there? I would be interested to get your views.
“Roughly two months later, National Park Service officers charged him. The charge was discharging a firearm in a national park.”
Everyone involved in the decision to charge him for that should be fired.
L
#1, In most jurisdictions, the statutory threshold for the use of “non-lethal” weapons is the same as for lethal devices.
#2, There’s no such thing as “non-lethal.” The term of art is “less lethal” but “reduced lethality” is closer to the truth.
In 2014, Australian crickter Phillip Hughes (who was wearing a regulation batsman’s helmet) was killed when a throw from the ‘bowler’ struck him in the side of the neck, severing his vertebral artery and causing death by exsanguination.
If a cricket ball can kill you, so can a bean bag.
People have been murdered with dessert spoons, stiletto heeled shoes and guitar strings. There’s not much you can’t kill with with a little imagination and a lot of hate.
Police often carry a “less lethal” weapon (taser or pepperball) in addition to their firearm, but their duty of care is different from a ‘civilians.’
Some people can’t get their heads around killing because of a mistranslation of the 6th Commandment that’s in wide (far too wide) distribution. And some people can’t conscience it because of the permanence of death. Like Clint Eastwood says in ‘The Unforgiven,’ killing somebody takes away everything they ever had, or ever would have. That’s a heavy burden to have on your conscience.
Those people are predictable. In large part, they’ll self-identify. Those are the people best suited for “less lethal” weapons.
Some people have a more realistic appraisal of the risk to them and/or their loved ones (or even an innocent bystander) if they don’t use lethal force when there is an imminent threat to life or limb. In general, they are better suited to no-apologies lethal weapons, i.e., guns.
But there’s a third group who think they’re in the 2nd group and think they could kill without hesitation, so they buy a gun and then don’t train with it or take other steps to condition their conscience and inure it to the act of taking another’s life. And when that moment comes, when their sights align on the assailant’s center of mass, the feel the resistance of that trigger under their finger, seeing the assailant staring back bug-eyed, ... they have a twinge of conscience, ... a moment of hesitation to rethink their decision to shoot, looking for another way out.
And in that instant of hesitation, the assailant takes their gun from them and kills them with it.
To quote Thunder Ranch’s Clint Smith, “I may get killed with my own gun, but he’s gonna have to beat me to death with it, cause it’s gonna be empty.”
In his 1947 book, “Men Against Fire,” Brigadier General S.L.A. Marshall argues that just 25% of US soldiers deliberately fired their service weapon at an enemy combatant during WWII. The other 75% either didn’t shoot at all or didn’t aim when they fired.
His study remains controversial but even if the number who didn’t fire was only 10%, these were men who should have been hardened by their training and their love of country and their comradeship with their fellow soldiers. Extrapolate that number to a bunch of civilians with no significant firearms training whatsoever and you get a significant number of gun owners who won’t have the stones to pull the trigger when the moment of truth comes.
A firearm isn’t a magic talisman that wards off danger, it’s a tool for killing. The only way to become proficient with the use of any tool is to practice with it. If you’re not going to invest in practicing, or if the thought of somebody lying on the ground at your feet and bleeding out over your shoes makes you squeamish, ... maybe you should look into pepper spray.
The National Park Sevice is generally unconstitutitonal.
Who cares?
The feds have specific constitutional instructions for commandeering a state’s land (US Const., Art. I, Sec. 8, Cl. 17).
Who cares? The freedom-loving Founders did.
It is similar to the problem with having and using a Taser. The use of a Taser has probably saved many lives, but when there are large numbers used, there are occasional problems. It is just the number of uses statistically and the fact people are not perfect.
There have been a few cases where the officer meant to draw and shoot the Taser and drew and shot their duty pistol, killing the person they wanted to use the Taser on.
You can work hard to prevent this, and police departments do so. They are mostly successful. The best system seems to me to have two people with separate duties. One is to use non-lethal force, the other to use lethal force. Having two people available is not an easy option either.
Paal is correct. The term less than lethal should have been used instead of non-lethal.
Agreed. This was on its face an obvious self-defense use of force; anyone trying to make it otherwise needs to be sent back for retraining.
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