HOW MUCH LONGER WILL SACRAMENTO ALLOW THE HARSH LANGUAGE? The Only Bear Defense Still Legal in California Nat’l Parks: Horns, Bells and Harsh Language.

California is, well, California. Besides being America’s utopian ideal for the civilian disarmament industry, the left coast’s great minds work damned hard to ensure that even defensive measures are difficult to acquire or downright illegal. This is a place, for instance that tried (though thankfully failed) to ban civilians from owning body armor. Self-defense ammo is banned in San Francisco. We could go on, but the list is virtually endless.

But we can’t blame the ban on carrying bear spray in California’s national parks on Golden Staters. The parks are under the aegis of the National Park Service. The feds.

That’s right, if you’re going to be hiking, camping, or carrying a pick-a-nick basket into Yosemite or one of the other four national parks in Cali, don’t bring bear spray with you. It’s against the law. As ActiveNorCal notes, that usually comes as a surprise to visitors from normal states where carrying a (somewhat) effective defense against being mauled by a bear is just common sense.

What’s the rationale for outlawing bear spray?

“The reason it is banned comes down to the bears themselves. California’s national parks are home exclusively to black bears, which are far less aggressive than grizzlies. The National Park Service says bear spray is unnecessary for black bear encounters and that no one has been killed or seriously injured by a black bear in Yosemite’s recorded history.”

Oh. They claim you really don’t have to worry about California’s black bears. They’re just more docile there.

Heh.