Posted on 10/29/2026 4:41:48 AM PDT by marktwain
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(AmmoLand.com)-An official National Park Video shows double meaning, irony, and tragedy, in three screenshots.
Link to video by NPS Glacier National Park on Youtube, created November 19, 2017 The video is only two minutes and 39 seconds long.
Link to the original video with text showing at the Glacier National Park site.
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.
Murphy's case made the local media and was widely known as a case where bear spray failed and a .357 magnum shot to the face worked.
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. Scott Holmes is an independent music composer who also contracts nature films. A year after these videos were created, Scott Holmes Music was created in Scotland, UK.
It would be difficult to believe the park rangers were not intimately familiar with the Brian Murphy case. It seems likely why they were laughing at the obvious double meaning at the end of the video. It may come from a lack of knowledge by Scott Holmes or it may be intentional. It could easily have been avoided by using the word "spray" to substitute for "shoot". The text at the end of the video could have been "if you spray a bear in the face."
In the Brian Murphy experience, bear spray failed to stop the bear. A shot from a .357 magnum to the face at 7-10 feet worked extremely well. With this context, it is easy to see why the statements are funny in a video on how to use bear spray.
The irony is palpable. A video showing how to use bear spray, saying it only is effective with a (gun)shot to the face of the bear.
The screen shots are from Glacier National Park Video. The text in screenshots is in the original video. In the outtake, the crew laughed at the above statements, as shown in the screenshot from the outtake below:
The phrases, funny in 2017, when considering the Brian Murphy case, reflect tragedy in 2026.
In 2026, Anthoni Pollio appears to have been killed by a grizzly bear on May 3, 2026, close to the same spot where Brian Murphy stopped a grizzly bear charge with his .357 magnum in July of 2014. Both were on the Mount Brown trail. The trail is only 4 miles long.
Would Pollio have acted differently if the National Park Service were not so intent on promoting the use of bear spray? Would Anthoni Pollio still be alive today? We can never know.
In North America, as of May, 2026, there have been nine people who were killed by bears after bear spray was used as a defense against the bears. There do not appear to be any people killed by bears when a handgun was present and fired against bears in North America. One person who fired a .22 caliber handgun in defense against a polar bear in the Svalbard archipelago was killed in 1996.
In November, 2017, the statistical evidence supporting the use of handguns in defense against bears had only been building for a year. In 2026, the statistical evidence is well developed.
©2026 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.
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The AmmoLand link is not to this article. It was included unintentionally. This article is from Gun Watch, not from AmmoLand. Ammoland has a very similar, but not identical article.
Bear Spray works really well if you have a fat friend along with you..................
National Park Rangers simply do not want people to be armed with guns. That is a fact!!
When you’re in bear country, you should carry pepper spray, and wear a bell.
You can always tell if you’re in bear country because the bear scat smells of peppers, and has bells in it.
ping
Great post. Thanks!
Is there a lawsuit potential for wrongful death?
The NPS knew firearms worked when bear spray did not, yet they pushed bear spray and never mention firearms for defense against bears.
Was the NPS in Glacier negligent?
Thanks for all the info you put out. Good reading.
GOOGLE
AI Overview
Sovereign immunity generally protects governments from lawsuits, meaning you cannot sue the state or federal government simply because officials carried out their legal, authorized duties. However, specific legal waivers and exceptions allow lawsuits under limited circumstances.
When You Can Sue the Government
• Negligence and Tort Claims: Under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), you can sue the federal government for personal injury, property damage, or wrongful death caused by the negligence or wrongful acts of federal employees acting within the scope of their employment.
• Constitutional Violations: You can sometimes sue individual federal agents for damages if they violate specific constitutional rights—such as Fourth Amendment unreasonable searches and seizures under Bivens, or religious freedoms under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (Tanzin v. Tanvir).
• Unlawful or Arbitrary Agency Actions: Under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), you can challenge federal agency rules or decisions in court if they are arbitrary, capricious, or contrary to the law.
• State and Local Entities: Local governments (such as cities and counties) can be sued under state tort claims acts or via Section 1983 lawsuits if a local policy or custom directly causes a civil rights violation.
Key Restrictions and Barriers
• Discretionary Functions: You cannot sue the government over policy-making or “discretionary” decisions where officials have free choice in how to execute their duties.
• Qualified Immunity: Individual government workers are often protected by qualified immunity, which shields them from personal liability unless they violated “clearly established” statutory or constitutional rights.
• Administrative Deadlines: Federal FTCA claims require filing a formal administrative claim (Standard Form 95) with the responsible agency within two years of the incident before you can ever step foot in a federal district court.
• No Punitive Damages: You cannot recover punitive damages against the federal government under the FTCA.
So much so that I think the producers of this video are deliberately lying when they say that a missed shot with a firearm will likely anger a bear. I've never seen any evidence of this. From the incidents I've read about, just the noise of a missed shot deters most attacks better than bear spray. It would be interesting to look at whether a firearm loaded with blanks would be more effective than any bear spray.
If you’ve selected as your defense against any bear, (a can of aerosolized capsicum), you may as well prance about the forest naked like a nymph and kiss your ass goodbye.
Ain’t no clown, with a funny-lookin’ hat, gonna convince me to go bare-assed (without a gun) in the woods.
The bears don’t care!
Exactly.
One person who fired a .22 caliber handgun in defense against a polar bear in the Svalbard archipelago was killed in 1996. ‘___________________’’
.22 is just not power enough to kill or even bother a bear.
Unless it is extremally well placed, it cannot kill even smaller target like deer etc.
Svalbard is funny.
The bears there are the polar ones, a lot more powerful than black bears.
There are so many, that they REQUIRE people to carry guns outside the town. But they are protected, so if you kill one, you will be investigated, so people are afraid to shoot them.
I’m saving all my fat friends for the nuclear/zombie apocalypse.
That’s some good tasty eating there with Carolina Gold BBQ sauce.
Tastier still if you feed them corn for a month or so before the flames.
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