Bad Dog! Bad Dog!
The same nanny-state nuisances who want to take away your cigarettes, your cell phones and your tasty trans-fat-laden snacks have now turned their sights on your family pet. Their plan? Banning pit bulls.
It is very possible that Boston police officers may soon be kicking in your doors and rounding up your dogs. And if you think I'm exaggerating, read it for yourself.
Their "argument," for lack of a better term, is that some pit bulls bite people. It's true. So do some Labrador retrievers, but nobody's talking about banning them. Rottweilers are at least as dangerous as pit bulls, but the government stooges say they're OK.
For the moment.
Every day, somebody is bitten by a dog, a cat, a hamster and an unlicensed child, and in 99% of the cases we understand that the responsible party isn't the pet, but the alleged adult in charge of the animal. How does banning the pit bull make sense?
It makes sense once you buy into the idea that what kind of dog you have--or cookie or cell phone, for that matter--is your neighbor's business. We used to believe that what you had wasn't as important as what you DO with what you have (Do I care that you killed your wife with a baseball bat instead of a gun?). Those days are gone.
We're back to the stupid argument made by 2nd Amendment opponents that the problem is the thing, not the person. The fact is, there's nothing wrong with pit bulls. But there can be a LOT wrong with pit bull owners.
The other, more disturbing argument the ban-the-bulls folks make is that simply being a member of the wrong group (the "pit bull" kind of dog) makes you inherently too dangerous. They say that, since pit bulls are involved in an inordinate number of dog-on-human attacks, and since these attacks can be attributed to the work these creatures were bred to do hundreds of years ago, that we are justified in judging ALL the members of this group as unacceptable.
Look at American crime statistics and think about that argument for awhile, and you'll find yourself in a very disturbing--and unacceptable--place.
It is very possible that Boston police officers may soon be kicking in your doors and rounding up your dogs. And if you think I'm exaggerating, read it for yourself.
Their "argument," for lack of a better term, is that some pit bulls bite people. It's true. So do some Labrador retrievers, but nobody's talking about banning them. Rottweilers are at least as dangerous as pit bulls, but the government stooges say they're OK.
For the moment.
Every day, somebody is bitten by a dog, a cat, a hamster and an unlicensed child, and in 99% of the cases we understand that the responsible party isn't the pet, but the alleged adult in charge of the animal. How does banning the pit bull make sense?
It makes sense once you buy into the idea that what kind of dog you have--or cookie or cell phone, for that matter--is your neighbor's business. We used to believe that what you had wasn't as important as what you DO with what you have (Do I care that you killed your wife with a baseball bat instead of a gun?). Those days are gone.
We're back to the stupid argument made by 2nd Amendment opponents that the problem is the thing, not the person. The fact is, there's nothing wrong with pit bulls. But there can be a LOT wrong with pit bull owners.
The other, more disturbing argument the ban-the-bulls folks make is that simply being a member of the wrong group (the "pit bull" kind of dog) makes you inherently too dangerous. They say that, since pit bulls are involved in an inordinate number of dog-on-human attacks, and since these attacks can be attributed to the work these creatures were bred to do hundreds of years ago, that we are justified in judging ALL the members of this group as unacceptable.
Look at American crime statistics and think about that argument for awhile, and you'll find yourself in a very disturbing--and unacceptable--place.
posted by Michael Graham at
9:45 AM
<< Home