The Collegian

Issue date: 2/22/06 Section: Opinion

Media Credit: Ken Fung

You'd think America would ban guns and cigarettes before picking on house pets, considering how many more people they've killed. Then again, I bet you never thought there'd be a law against harpooning a whale off a bridge from a moving vehicle in Texas (which there is).

Surprise, Americans! Several states are proposing (and passing) laws banning pit bulls including: Colorado, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, New Jersey, and Oklahoma. As well as counties such as: Los Angeles, California, Lancaster, Ohio, and Shannon Hills, Arkansas. If such bills are passed, no new pit bulls, pit-mixes, or pit bull relatives will be allowed in the state. Remaining animals will be spayed or neutered and all owners must be over 21 with a $100,000 insurance policy per animal. Those who can not afford this or find new homes for their dogs will have to put them down.

This "Breed Specific Legislation" (BSL) is the result of widely publicized attacks since 1990. A majority of the time, the human owners or the victims are to blame for provoking, abusing, and allowing the animal to be malnourished, poorly trained, and aggressive. Often a pit bull mix or cousin of the pitbull is to blame. Just like a true witch hunt, no one is giving the pit bulls a fair chance. Why doesn't anyone notice how the media specifies "pit bull mix" but not "poodle mix?" Can you say "discrimination?"

Negligence of the victim, or in the case of children, the victim's parents, is often to blame. For example, the fatal attack of 2005 in Hamtrack, Michigan. The story was reported as "a young girl mauled to death by family Pit bull." The neighbors were confused, saying "the dogs were raised with the children since puppy hood." The animals had escaped the basement and attacked the girl while she was "playing on the swing set at their old house."

No one reported how long the animals were locked in the basement of the family's old house after the family had moved. Both dogs were malnourished since no one fed them and had ingested rat poison making them chemically imbalanced. The female dog was a year old and had a bullet still lodged in her groin from being shot, while neither dog was spayed nor neutered, and the female was in heat. Forgive me if I fail to see how we are blaming the dogs for this attack.

While we're pointing fingers, why do we assume the pit bull is to blame? Any dogs can attack people, why are we singling out this specific breed? Pit bulls were bred to be fighters and guard dogs. Even horses who are normally even tempered and gentle are bred to be race horses that are the fastest and the meanest. If you can breed it in, you can surely breed it out. What it really comes down to is nurture vs. nature and whether we can really blame an animal for the way we've raised it and trained it to be.

For more information check out: www.understand-a-bull.com

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