While this may sound impressive, this is probably due to the lack of emergency rooms for treating bears, and they slowly bleed to death several hours after being shot (probably having already maimed, killed and consumed the person that shot them). Eventual death of your opponent really has nothing to do with stopping their attack from injuring/killing you before they died.

This death rate for bears from firearms is much higher than death rates for humans from those same firearms, even though bears are much more sturdily built than humans.

Here's an article by someone who compiled a bunch of statistics into a nice presentation:

http://www.buckeyefirearms.org/alternate-look-handgun-stopping-power

Scroll down to the table that shows actual percentages for stops, kills, incapacitations, etc.

Compare the results for, say, .22 against .357mag. Both have a %fatal of 34%. So does that mean a .22 is as good as a .357mag? Well, if you look at the stat for "# of rounds until incapacitation", you'll see that the lowly .22 is even better than the .357mag (1.38 vs. 1.7). And comparing this article to the other article quoted in a previous post, those big 'ol bears died at almost twice the rate of humans (61% vs. 34%). Common sense must be applied when looking at stats and drawing conclusions.

My point being, take statistics reported in various studies with a grain of salt. It doesn't make sense that firearms, handguns in particular, are so effective in stopping bears, when they are so ineffective in stopping humans. Maybe the bears were just scared away in most of the successful defense cases, and a firecracker or air horn would have worked as well as a firearm?

I'd still want a firearm when dealing with a bear, but preferably a magnum caliber rifle from about 100 yards out, from a rest, with a scope, and a couple of good solid hits to various vital areas. (Actually, I'd prefer to let the bear go from 100 yards out, but if it was in a dead run heading for me, I'd take my shot sooner rather than later.) The probability of taking out a bear with your handgun as you stumble and fall backwards putting out wild shots is next to nil. Even if it's a magic 10mm handgun. Certainly better than nothing for bear defense, but I wouldn't get over confident about it.