Look, the real answer is identifying problem owners, rather than problem dogs. If you want more strict rules on how dogs are kept, and what constitutes animal cruelty, I’m there. If you want to make a law that considers it animal cruelty to train a dog to attack (except for licensed animal trainers, police, military and such), I’ll go for that. I agree, keeping a dog that’s trained to attack is like keeping a pet cougar or bear. However.
Banning the breed simply sweeps the problem under the rug. If we ban pit bulls, we have to ban Rottweilers. Ban Rottweilers and we have to ban Dobermans. Ban Dobermans and we have to ban German Shepards. It makes no sense to ban a breed. If you want mandatory sterilization of dogs with certain characteristics, that might be doable. And if it just so happened that most dogs classified as pit bulls had those characteristics, fine. But you admit that you have no idea what those characteristics would be.
And besides, everyone knows that this will not be a nation-wide effort. So we’ll have some states, provinces, and cities where the breed is banned, but others where they are not. There is no federal animal control outfit, these are all controlled by cities and counties (do you call them counties up in Canada?).
And if you are serious about eliminating the threat of dog attacks no matter what the cost, then all dogs over 20 pounds should be euthanized. Obviously, we have to count the costs. Even you wouldn’t advocate exterminating all dogs. But that is the only way to eliminate the threat of dog attacks. So rather than talking about eliminating the risk of dog attacks, let’s talk about reducing the risk.
