The Mina Show

A nice article out of Colorado on pit bulls (except for mentioning that oft-quoted CDC 'study' that everyone misses the end point of - that breed bans are ineffective).

I feel for the directors and employees of city/county governments forced to enforce a law that mandates death for dogs who look a certain way and discrimination for people who own certain dogs.

Doug Kelley, director of animal services in Denver says it best: He said the ban has lessened the number of attacks by pit bulls, certainly, but he has no evidence that the ban has decreased the total number of dog bites or attacks in the city. He also said the ban gives people "a false sense of security."

Pit bulls still bite in Denver. Other dogs still bite in Denver. Dog bites haven't gone down (in Aurora and other BSL-ridden areas, they've gone up). People aren't safer.

But were they unsafe as it pertains to dogs to begin with? I still submit that dog bites aren't a public safety problem that the overwhelming majority of dogs don't bite, that the overwhelming majority of people are not bitten or mauled by dogs. But that isn't much of a story - the dog that just sits there and wags her tail, the dog who plays with a tennis ball, the dog who licks the face of the neighborhood children. Those stories don't sell but they happen far more frequently than the stories of children being mauled or adults being bitten.