Dog stuff
Here’s a brief summary on state supreme court decisions on breed bans. I knew about the Alabama ruling but not the Ohio ruling:
The Alabama Supreme Court ruled in 2002 there is no genetic evidence that one breed of dog is more dangerous than another, based on breed alone.
The Ohio Supreme Court ruled in 2004 that the state’s pit bull ban was unconstitutional because it denies dog owners their right to due process.
Here’s an article on Denver residents’ efforts to save their dogs:
A few weeks ago, two police cars and two animal control vehicles pulled up at the home of Stef’ny Steffan looking for her beloved 4-year-old pit bull, Xena. Seven officers hauled the animal off to the city shelter, putting her on death row.
Xena became an outlaw after Denver won a court fight and reinstated one of the toughest pit-bull bans in the nation. Since May, more than 380 dogs have been impounded and at least 260 destroyed – an average of more than three a day.
Dog owners are in a panic. Some are using an underground railroad of sorts, sending their pets to live elsewhere or hiding them from authorities. City officials would not estimate how many people might be violating the ordinance.
It also has some interesting stats:
Critics of the ordinance say that a blanket ban on an entire breed is misguided that the law should instead target irresponsible owners and all dangerous dogs.
“If anyone says one dog is more likely to kill – unless there’s a study out there that I haven’t seen – that’s not based on scientific data,” said Julie Gilchrist, a doctor at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who researches dog bites.
The CDC, the American Veterinary Medical Association and the Humane Society of the United States examined 20 years of dog-bite data and concluded that pit bulls and Rottweilers caused the most deaths.
But the researchers also noted that fatal attacks represent a small proportion of dog-bite injuries and that the number of bites per breed simply seems to rise with their popularity.
July 21st, 2005 at 11:14 am
I bet we could look at data and determine certain physical characteristics about the criminal class.
Would Denver then want to round up all people who shared those physical characteristics and put them to death?
August 19th, 2005 at 8:19 am
[…] I do think Glen Pruitt should maybe refer to the Alabama Supreme Court, which ruled there is no genetic evidence that one breed of dog is more dangerous than another, based on breed alone. […]