Skip to main content

The Danger of Breed Specific Legislation

By May 16, 2016December 8th, 2016Legislation

Legislation

The Danger of Breed Specific Legislation

THE DANGER OF DANGEROUS DOG LAWS, AND BREED SPECIFIC LEGISLATION

Dangerous dog laws remove the human factor, and concentrate solely upon the dog, not taking into consideration that the dog is the responsibility of its owner.

Lawmakers go to great lengths to describe, and to define animal behaviors, and to then punish said behaviors. It is far more reasonable to write laws that are directed at the dog owner, rather than the dog. Our laws must be written for we human beings. Laws must be reasonable. Animals must not be criminalized under laws that are intended to protect human rights, and to control human behaviors. It is unreasonable to write animal behavior into laws that no animal has the capacity to understand, or to function under. It is unreasonable to mete out criminal labels to animals, i.e. dangerous, or potentially dangerous. It is unreasonable to proscribe punishments to animals under our laws. We must bring this writing of animal behaviors into our laws to a halt, and demanding that humans be held accountable, not animals. We must stop thinking that it is a better trade off than prohibitions on dog ownership. We are wrong. Neither is a good choice. No dog is capable of understanding, or answering to any law that has ever been written. Dangerous dog laws that hold a dog to a set of written regulations that it will never respond is a perfect set up to promote animal rights, where an animal is given a legal position under the law to conform, or to behave in a proscribed manner. Laws are not in the realm of the understanding of even the most intelligent dog. To set forth behavioral acceptability, and punishments for animals is to elevate them to a human level under law. This is just exactly what the animal rights movement wants. When we accept dangerous dog laws are hugging the serpent. Our laws must only be written to proscribe human behavior. We must see dangerous dog laws that hold animals to accountability under the law for what they are. As the law elevates animals, it devalues human beings. The animal rights movement expects us to fight breed specific legislation, and to promote dangerous dog laws, and we have done just that.

Neither should we allow prohibitions on the responsible ownership of any dog by breed. It violates the XIV Amendment, equal treatment, and equal protection.

The taking of dogs by breed is only the beginning of the eventual removal of all animals from our ownership, and use. Animals are among the most ancient of our traditional property, when government decides to remove our ownership rights, it will be piecemeal, not whole hog. Think for a moment what would happen if your city, or county government stipulated that all dogs must be forfeit. People would stand up and put an immediate stop to that. Breed specific dog laws appear on the surface to be about dogs, but upon closer examination we discover that BSL is all about we human owners of dogs. It’s about government invading the sanctity of our homes, and our property, and removing animals that we consider to be a part of our family. It is about government criminalizing dog ownership by breed. It is about numerous breeds, and mixed breeds of dogs that are now named in breed specific prohibitions, or restrictions in venues across the United States at this very time, that we, the people may not own. Laws must give us the right to due process of law. BSL in Denver, Kennewick, and many places across the United States remove animals for no reason other than breed, from responsible owners, with no charges of negligence, and no opportunity to have a case, or a case heard in the Courts. BSL allows warrant-less searches and seizures of private property for no reason other than the breed of dog involved. BSL violates the Constitutional right to recompense for property taken by government for public use, i.e. public safety.

Those who own the target breeds are set apart, are vilified, and made to look like criminals, so that the rest of society will not be troubled by the government’s taking of the dogs. They will actually endorse the taking of dogs, not realizing that their dogs are going to be added to the growing list of restricted, or prohibited dogs. The targeted dogs are purportedly endowed with mythical powers that no other breed of canine can match. The surrounding myth would make these dogs so omnipotent that no mere mortal could possibly outsmart, control, train, contain, or have a normal owner relationship with them. Realistically all domestic animal breeds were developed by human beings. When we come to the realization that it is us that these laws are truly aimed at, then we can shed the blinders, and get down to the real business of protecting our rights. When we stand up for ourselves as citizens, when we refuse to have our rights, and our property stripped from us then we will be invincible. We must demand due process of law. We must not give over our rights and our property. Dogs are valuable property. We humans have well over thirty five thousand years of tradition in owning dogs. Dogs serve us in most every capacity from the gentle companion to service dogs, to guide dogs, to police dogs, to search, and rescue dogs, military dogs, drug sniffing dogs, hunting dogs, field dogs, herding dogs, guard dogs, show dogs, obedience dogs, dancing dogs, agility dogs, fly ball racers, the list is endless. and endlessly varied.

Far more people are killed by any number of other things than by dogs. Venomous snake bites kill an average of fifteen to twenty Americans per year. Bees kill one hundred, to three hundred persons a year on average. In 1989 fire-ant stings killed thirty two people in Texas. Lightening strikes one in every six hundred thousand persons killing one hundred, to three hundred persons annually. According to the U.S. Department of Labor there were five thousand, five hundred, and seventy-five work related fatalities in 2003. There were thirty eight thousand (38,000) fatal automobile crashes in 2003 across the U.S. Sadly, an average of fifteen hundred (1,500) children are killed each year in the United States by a parent, or guardian. The leading cause of death among pregnant women in the U.S. is murder at the hand of the father of her unborn child.

Given these figures, the restrictions on ownership of dogs, by breed, make no sense. California’s SB 861 analysis quotes figures that there have been forty-seven human deaths in California that were attributable to dogs from the years 1965 through 2001. That averages to one death a year out of a population of some thirty-five million, eighty-four thousand, four hundred and fifty-three people (35,084,453). Subtract one from the figure 35,484,453 and you will see how many people did not die from dog bites in California each year… San Francisco averages three hundred and sixty two r