YOU DO THE MATH: FIGHT BSL!

What is BSL?

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.

Most often these laws are proposed and passed after a city/county/state receives reports of several attacks by a specific breed of dog. 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, instead of the owner, where the responsibility belongs.There is a vicious circle surrounding Pit Bulls: a “tough guy” decides he wants a “tough” dog for his reputation. So, he gets a Pit Bull. When the dog passes the “fun” puppy stage, he is most likely tied out on a chain and left to spend his days with little or no attention from humans, or he is abused. When the dog does receive some attention, it’s from the “tough” guy’s “tough” friends, and they bully the dog, or play roughly and mean with him. The dog quickly becomes restless, starved for attention, and frustrated. One day, he breaks loose and runs free, charging a human, or another animal…not to bite them, but to be loved. Because he’s never been able to run free, he is so excited that his running and playing are mistaken for rampaging and acting vicious. All he’s ever known is abuse, and if a friendly human hand reaches out, he may very well bite, but it’s because he doesn’t know any better, not because he was born or bred that way. This is a prime example of an irresponsible owner. However, we see that the owner isn’t the one punished; it’s the dog and his entire breed’s reputation.

Other reasons BSL isn’t effective:

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 often gets called a Pit Bull, but 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!

Other Important Facts You Might Want to Know:

*There is no proof that a Pit Bull is any more dangerous than any other breed.
*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.

*In one day, a Pit Bull attacked a child, as did a Labrador Retriever. Hundreds of reporters covered the Pit Bull attack, while only a few covered the other. They 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.



Source: http://www.bamabully.org/bsl.html