Today's the day for KC's new Pit Bull Ordinance to take affect. On Tuesday, I wrote about how ridiculous is was that KCMO thought they could even come remotely close to enforcing this new policy. But today I want to talk about the unintended consequences of new laws.
One thing that policy-makers try to do is to create new laws that will be specific enough to stand up in court but vague enough to cover a broad spectrum of issues. However, with every law it seems, there are unintended consequences of the law that are sometimes very hard to determine.
Several years ago, Ft. Worth, TX instituted a mandatory spay/neuter policy in order to better control the animal overpopulation (similar to the law in KCMO that starts today). The unintended consequence was that there were several owners who didn't want to alter their dogs and hid them...which meant they weren't getting out to see vets and getting their annual shots -- which then turned into a mini-rabies epidemic. Not good.
KCMO faces that possible reality with the new law. They also have a loophole in their law that if someone has their dog confiscated for not being altered -- instead of paying to get their dog bag, they have the option to go get another dog. While the intent of the MSN is to control the dog (in this case, specifically pit bulls) overpopulation issue, the law could actually bring more demand for Back-yard-bred dogs to be used as replacements for confiscated dogs.
It seems that in a society where we have too many people who inexplicably look at dogs as being disposable, this is a horrible loophole to leave open because it could actually create more demand for the byproduct of the very thing they're trying to stop.
Laws have unintended consequences -- because as humans, we tend to look for ways to fudge, bend, break or work around the rules. And the worst of us find the loophole. This is why it's importat that policy makers know what problem it is they're trying to solve with their animal control ordinances -- if they don't, the unintended consequences might be worse than where they started.
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