BAMA BULLY RESCUE

BREED SPECIFIC LEGISLATION

Click HERE for an article on Breed Specific Legislation
Published in Proceedings of Annual AVMA Convention, July 11-14, 2009 Seattle Washington

-usually defined as any law, ordinance, or policy that affects only a specific breed or breeds.
-breeds affected are usually Pit Bulls, American Bulldogs, Boxers, Rottweilers, Dobermans, and sometimes German Shepherds. Mixes of these breeds and other "Bully" breeds are affected as well.

-most often these laws are proposed and passed after a
 city/county/state receives reports of several attacks by a  specific breed.

BSL has been found many times over to be an ineffective proposal.

What makes BSL ineffective?

-Dog attacks are usually the fault of an irresponsible owner, not a specific breed. Therefore, banning an entire breed will solve nothing. The irresponsible owners will just most likely move on to another breed, and continue making bad choices regarding their dogs. BSL targets the breed, not the owner where the responsibility belongs.

-It’s very costly. It’s costly to the responsible owners, because they are forced to pay for insurance policies, ridiculously tall fences to be built, etc. BSL is also costly to the place enforcing it. There will be kenneling costs and court costs to deal with.

-It’s unfair to responsible owners. It restricts your right as a responsible dog owner to own certain breeds. If the law states that you can own the dog, but there are restrictions (muzzling, short leashes, high fences), you are still punished. When you take your dog in public, you are frowned upon and sometimes harassed by others for owning what they believe to be a “vicious” breed.

-Dogs can only be identified by appearance, and Pit Bulls are especially difficult for the average person to identify. There are far too many people that are not qualified to determine breeds of dogs and therefore Pit Bulls have become scapegoats. Any dog that bites or attacks, has a large head, or cropped ears, often gets called a Pit Bull. Many of these are actually not Pit Bulls at all, or are mixes with another dominant breed. Because of this, many dogs will be wrongly identified, and countless lives taken.

-BSL is actually unconstitutional.

-Click HERE for a great article from the ASPCA titled "Are Breed Specific Laws Effective?"

 Other Important Facts You Might Want to Know:

*There is no proof that a Pit Bull is any more dangerous than any other breed. The media portrays the Pit Bull in such a bad light, leading people to believe they are inherently aggressive.

*Pit Bulls actually score higher on temperament tests than most other breeds. American Pit Bull Terriers as a breed have passed the American Temperament Test at an 84.1 percentage rate, and American Staffordshire Terriers have passed with an 83.9 percentage rate. This is above the scores of Golden Retrievers, who have a passing percentage rate of 83.8; and Collies with a passing rate of 79.2 percent. Please visit http://www.atts.org/ for more information on temperament testing.

*Pit Bulls and "Bully" breeds are portrayed only negatively in the media, rarely will they show a positive Pit Bull hero story, because the media believes positive doesn’t sell.

*Pit Bulls are some of the most effective dogs used in law enforcement. Please visit www.lawdogsusa.org for more information on how Pit Bulls are used in law enforcement, and why they are preferred.

*The Center for Disease Control conducted a study on fatal dog bites over a twenty year period between the years 1979 and 1998.  Although the breeds of dogs involved were noted in this study, the CDC does not conclude that specific breeds are more likely to bite or fatally attack.  Therefore, these findings should not be used for breed-specific policy making decisions relating to this topic.  4.7 million Americans are bitten by dogs each year and of that number, approximately 12 fatalities are the result (about 0.0002% of the total number of people bitten).  Because there is no accurate method to determine the population of any particular breed, there is no conclusive way to measure which breeds are more likely to bite or kill. If it can not be determined that a breed is more likely to bite or kill than any other, a breed ban is obviously not the answer.

Alternatives to BSL 

-Dangerous Dog Bill-

* BBR fully supports Dangerous Dog Laws. These laws will punish the owner, as well as the dog, if it is in fact deemed to be dangerous, but they aren’t breed specific.

What You Can Do:

Please be a responsible owner at all times, and keep your dog properly socialized. This is vital in our fight against BSL.

Please help us!  If you know of any cities who are trying to (or have) enacted BSL, or if you know of any apartment complexes that will not allow Pit Bulls or other Bully breeds, please E-mail richarddachard@aol.com. We will be compiling a list for the website.

Abstract: Panic Policy Making: Canine Breed Bans in Canada and the United States

Although dogs have bitten humans for millennia, in recent years state, provincial, and local governments have responded to incidents of dog bites with legislation or administrative rules that ban the ownership of dog breeds such as American Staffordshire Terriers, Rottweilers, and American Pit Bulls. In this paper we examine if a framework of "panic policymaking" can explain the passage of breed bans. The paper first develops a framework to explain panic policymaking that builds upon and modifies psychological theories of decision making, the sociological literature on moral panics, the analytical and case study literature about critical junctures in policy paths, behavioral economic studies of responses to risks, and the empirical studies of punctuated policy equilibria. Using data from a survey of the Canadian and U.S. public and interviews with interest group activists and public officials in locales that considered and defeated or passed breed bans, we then assess the predictive value of the concept of panic policymaking. Finally, we consider how breed bans indicate the scope and limits of the concept of animal rights.

As a footnote it also hits on how the media can affect rejection or addition of BSL.

One can read the study at this link:
http://www.allacade mic.com/meta/ p_mla_apa_ research_ citation/ 1/7/6/5/6/ p176563_index. html