Friday, June 17, 2005

Pit Bull Bans

So, Denver has renewed its pit bull ban. Georgia and New Mexico want to ban the breed statewide. I'm not going to rehash all the obvious problems, but I will say two things. 1. Again, a pit bull is both a specific breed and a job title. Banning the specific breed does not guarantee that all dogs with that job title will be eliminated. 2. Assholes use dogs for entertainment and to guard their meth labs and to represent and embody their masculinity. There's nothing to stop them from deciding, if pit bulls are outlawed, that they won't just switch to German Shepherds or Rottwilers or packs of angry coon hounds. (You think fighting off a pit bull or two is impossible? Imagine trying to fight off a pack of dogs trained to attack. For all their drawbacks, pit bulls don't work well with other dogs. But dogs who will work together to take down their prey? With us as the prey? Perhaps we should outlaw large hounds as well, just to be safe.) Still, I don't mean to belittle people's real concerns about pit bulls, but Christ Jesus, the problem is only partially the dogs. It's also owners who deliberately mistreat their dogs or ask their dogs to do terrible things or who just don't bother to take the time to socialize dogs they don't really understand. Banning the dogs doesn't do anything to solve the behavior of the owners.

2 Comments:

Blogger Sarah Bott said...

I think it's 100% owner's problem/fault/responsibility.

6/18/2005 12:03:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Right on...I'm a pit bull owner, who used to believe the hype and be scared to death of these animals, but in the long run, breed specific legislation is really doggie racism. It solves nothing because criminals will not abide by a law in the first place, and you can make almost any dog with some size on it horribly dangerous if you want to.

6/18/2006 05:42:00 PM  

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