I was delighted last month when the Arkansas legislature roundly defeated a bill that would repeal local breed specific laws.
A bill intended to bar municipalities from issuing bans targeting specific dog breeds failed to advance from the House on Tuesday.
www.nwaonline.com
This doesn’t go far enough however, because it allows cities to permit people to own these dangerous animals. States should ban them outright.
Pit bulls and any true bulldog or bully breed should be illegal for general ownership as a pet. This is for several reasons
1) they are evolutionary adapted to cause permanent injury and death.
These dogs stem from an English sport called “bull baiting” where dogs would be arranged to kill bulls, as Bull baiting fell out of favor then new blood sports such as dog fighting and ratting emerged, for which bulldogs were crossed with terriers to make a strong and agile dog with a ferocious bite and high pain tolerance. This is the origin of modern pitbulls.
2) pitbulls are the least wanted dog in America, many pitbulls are given to shelters quickly as naive people realize these animals are dangerous. The pit Bull is the most euthanized dog in America and I this overpopulation is in part because insufficient bsl exists to prosecute breeders for making this animals
3) pitbulls are indisputably the most dangerous animals in America, 2/3 of all serious dog attacks on humans and over 90% of serious dog attacks on domesticated animals are from pit bulls, which are less then ten percent of dogs. The next dog after pitbulls are dobermans which are trained to be actual property guard dogs and it’s less than a quarter of pit Bull numbers.
https://coloradoinjurylaw.com/dog-bite-statistics/#:~:text=Pitbulls are 2.5x more,and 63% of ocular injuries.&text=Pitbull attacks have higher morbidity,than attacks by other breeds.
3) pit bulls have high prey drive, they will attack their own owners, their owners children, their owners parents, sometimes even strangers and they do it without warning. Pit bulls will attack
infants for crying because it triggers their prey drive
4) pit bulls have locking jaws which cause serious injury. Lucas County Ohio Dog Warden Tom Skeldon once presented a video in court of a dog that wouldn’t release its grasp on a cable after being tranquilized. Even pit Bull activists recommend carrying
“break sticks” to pry the jaws of the dog when it attacks another dog.
5) existing lesser laws are inadequate. Most laws involving dangerous animals are meant to deal with normal dog breeds which are nuisances, not for fatal attacks by dogs like pit bulls. Breed specific laws allow accountability for people who choose to adopt dangerous animals
