hi dw, again an excellent well thought out post. i have been running around all day and still have a lot more "chores" to finish up and need to grab a quick workout, but want to touch base on a couple things and hopefully edit it when i have more time. again, excellent post.
addressing your 2nd paragraph:
i am far from an expert from BSL. you may know a lot more than i do. i was and at this time still am under the impression that BSL is in fact about making a breed extinct. using the most well known city, denver for an example. if every state were to implement that type of BSL act, please let me understand how this is not an extinction plan? i am sarcastic by nature, but this is not sarcasm. really don't see how it can be construed any other way. so, we will say for the point of this discussion, the usa implements denver's BSL ban statewide. what happens to the american pit bull terrier in your opinion?
this is my take:
denver bsl plan
now i also read in your closing paragraph that you wouldn't be apposed to the breed being allowed in some select area. there's the rub to me. if you say want to limit cities for ownership and enact your BSL there, i understand that cities have lots more people in a sardine can than joe out in BFE WV. what happens when an incident happens someone in that latter environment?
i've never argued that the pit bull is in a class of a few and not the majority, so really have no questions there. but i have argued exactly that. if you have a large dog capable of killing and inflicting disfigurement and it does so, you and it shouldn't be given a pass because it isn't a certain type of dog.
in your closing paragraph, you touch on, what constitutes a pit bull. there's another rub. taking the denver BSL again, i believe they have a criteria of certain things and if the animal meets a certain # of those they claim it as a pit bull and confiscate it. if the animal has 1 less than the criteria # it is 10-4 and carry on, nothing to see here. believe there was a case where animal control took 2 dogs from a backyard who weren't doing anything wrong and ended up they weren't pit bulls either.
you know it comes down to, pick out the pit bull from below:
pit bull? yes or no
pit bull? yes or no
pit bull? yes or no
pit bull? yes or no
pit bull? yes or no
from quick reading, and granted it may be from people who have my point of view, so may be taken with a grain of salt, but it appears a lot of city/towns that did have BSL have overturned them already and /or are reviewing the effect.
i still side on the way of portland oregon, but maybe even a tad more strict than below:
Could Denver find a better way of identifying dangerous dogs? Portland, Oregon, a city of similar size, was also the site of a pit bull attack in 1986 that resulted in the death of a child: a five-year-old boy who was fatally mauled in suburban Multinomah County. Like Denver, Portland became embroiled in a debate over how to deal with vicious breeds. Unlike Denver, Portland convened a task force of veterinarians, health officials, animal behaviorists and animal-control officers to study potential animal-control ordinances. Rather than slap a ban on a single breed, the commission recommended that the law be adjusted to allow animal-control officers to take action against the owner of a dog that was displaying certain aggressive behaviors and label the animal a "potentially dangerous dog" before it caused serious injury to a human. As a result, Portland created a model with five levels of severity, starting with any dog, running loose, that "menaces, chases, displays threatening or aggressive behaviors" against a human or other animal. Each level involves potential for a greater punitive action against the owner, as well as certain requirements for the dog. At the highest level, reserved for a dog that's caused serious injury to a person, the animal is to be euthanized, and officials have the additional option of suspending the owner's right to possess a dog.
Portland's law was put into effect in 1986. Five years later, a study found that Portland had classified 1,652 dogs as potentially dangerous. The breed with the most such classifications was the German Shepherd, followed by the pit bull, then the Labrador Retriever and the Doberman. If Portland had simply banned pit bulls after the killing of a child, it might have missed the aggressive German Shepherds. More significant, it might have punished good owners (and dogs) for the sins of the bad. The program also reduced the amount of repeat biters by 257 percent.
again, sorry for a quick type reply to your post, but wanted to get your thoughts?
Pit bulls are genetically breed to be a viscous dog. It can turn on you at any given moment. Good thing this family tried to rescue this innocent pit bull
