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What is Breed-Specific Legislation?

Breed-specific legislation is a bit a of a hot-button issue within the animal-welfare community right now. Numerous cities and counties across the U.S  have enacted breed-specific legislation since 1980. The goal was to prevent the number of dog bites occurring within a community by banning, or placing restrictions upon, the breed that was thought to be the most dangerous. When I surveyed 18 of my English 2010 class mates, only 4 had heard of breed-specific legislation. 

That is 22%

Breed-specific legislation, or BSL, is any law or ordinance that bans or restricts dogs of a certain breed. There are a couple of different types of BSL in use in the United States:

• Mandatory Sterilization: This requires that dogs of a certain breed, or dogs that appear to be a certain breed, be spayed and neutered. The most common breeds of dogs that this is used on in the U.S are dogs classified as "Pit bulls", Chihuahua's, and mixes that appear to have those breeds in them.
• Restrictions: This type of law or ordinance places certain restrictions on dogs of varying breeds. For example: "mandatory muzzling, special liability insurance requirements, special licensing, property posting requirements, enclosure requirements, [and]...sale or transfer notification requirements" (Breed Specific Legislation FAQ 1)
• Bans: This places a complete ban upon certain breeds of dogs, or dogs that have been classified as 'dangerous', within city, county, or state lines. Occasionally, a grandfather clause will be worked into the legislation that will allow current residents and their animals to be exempt from the new ordinance as long as their dog does not act out or get into trouble. If no grandfather clause is written, then current residents have to re-home their dogs, their families, or take their dogs to the local shelter to be euthanized. 

According to the website Dogsbite.org, a pro-BSL website, 41 states in the U.S have breed-specific legislation in place. One of those states — Ohio — just recently repealed their state-wide ban on dogs classified as Pit bulls that had been in place since 1987.  Ohio was the only state in the U.S that had state-wide breed-specific legislation on the books.

One of the reasons that BSL is so controversial is that opponents view the laws as fatally flawed. John Garcia, who has been working with dogs for over 13 years, and who is the co-manager and one of the trainers at Best Friends Animal Society's Dogtown believes that, "[y]ou can't just make the blanket statement that such-and-such a breed will bite you. . . . To say that a certain breed is bad or evil — like Pit bulls — is like saying that every Caucasian male is Jefferey Dahmer" (Bechtel 13)  Every dog is an individual, each with their own unique personalities and triggers. For example: let's say we have ten Caucasian people in a room together. One of those people in that room might be afraid of spiders, but that is not to say that they all are going to be afraid of spiders just because they are Caucasian.

To judge a dog based on appearance alone is flawed. Instead of judging a dog based on its breed, opponents say municipalities need to strengthen the penalties for irresponsible dog ownership. The National Canine Research Council would like to see "responsible pet ownership laws [that] set acceptable and achievable standards of pet owner behavior, and . . . hold people to those standards", in place of the BSL legislation that is currently in place across the U.S. Examples of responsible pet ownership laws include things like: higher penalties for violating leash laws, harsher punishments for animal abuse and neglect and perhaps funds being set aside to help educate dog owners on proper care and supervision for their animals.

According to the article "Justice for the Vick-tims" by Ledy VanKavage, she states "84% of the [fatal dog attacks in 2006] involved reckless owners whose dogs were abused or neglected; were interacting with unsupervised children; or were not humanely controlled or contained (i.e., they were either chained or allowed to roam)." If states and municipalities were to consider revising their laws and ordinances to punish and/or educate poor dog owners rather than the dog, they may find that they will have a higher success rate in preventing dog bites than what they have now.