When bad things happen, we often point out that if someone had been armed, there’s a good chance it wouldn’t have happened. This is especially true when we’re talking about violent crimes.

No one thinks that someone armed is immune to homicide. It’s a gun, not a magic talisman. 

However, a columnist for USA Today–that’s right, the same publication that told the world about chainsaw bayonets–thinks he’s being clever by taking a wild animal being a wild animal and suggesting we should arm them.

It was only a matter of time before Fat Bear Week turned violent.

The annual online tournament pitting bears who lift heavy forks against their girthy brothers and sisters had a delayed start this year after competitor 469, an adult male bear known as Patches, murdered competitor 402, an adult female.

The gruesome crime was captured on one of the cameras that stream fat bear activity at Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska, leading officials to delay the planned Monday night release of the tournament bracket.

The bear competitors in Fat Bear Week must be issued guns

Following the bear community’s traditional one day of mourning – what ursinologists call “The Day of Grrrrrrrrace” – the brackets were released Tuesday. Fat Bear Week 2024 is now underway, allowing people to vote for the bear they believe “best exemplifies fatness and success in brown bears.”

But this shocking one-incident wave of bear-on-bear violence leads me to believe a significant change to this beloved event is in order: Park officials must provide the bears with guns.

Like I said, he thinks he’s being clever.

He’s trying to twist concepts like concealed carry and armed teachers to try to apply the same arguments to bears. Of course, he’s not the first to try and flip “bear arms” to “arm bears.”

Never mind that bears have natural weapons such as teeth and claws–to say nothing of, you know, being bears–he wants people to think that while this idea is ridiculous, doing so with people is equally ridiculous, which is a false equivalence.

Ironically, the situation actually demonstrates one reason why gun rights matter, though.

Female bears are typically smaller than males, much like in humans. As a result, if a male bear decides to attack and kill a female bear, the female bear doesn’t have a lot of options.

So to, when a guy tries to attack a woman–I will not call such a creature a “man”–the woman is going to have about the same options as a female bear.

What’s more, the woman doesn’t have the claws and teeth and isn’t a bear. She’s likely to be at even more of a disadvantage.

Sure, there are exceptions, but most women aren’t going to come out ahead against most men in an unarmed confrontation.

Yet if you put a gun in her hands, things change. Yes, even if he has a gun. She might not come out on top–the female bear had weapons, after all–but she at least has a chance whereas without that gun, she has no chance regardless of what the bad guy has.

The author thinks he’s being clever, and in a way, he was. He just illustrated the opposite point of the one he was trying to present.