Last month, in my monthly Top 5, I noted a couple of posts that I thought showed some momentum toward repealing BSL.
At the time, I noted that in October, Moses Lake, WA repealed their breed specific law, as did Morgan, UT. The United Kingdom House of Lords passed the third reading of their BSL repeal -- a major step toward a full repeal of their 25 year old breed ban.
And in November, the momentum continues.
Early this week, the community of Overland, MO repealed the breed-specific portion of their newly passed dangerous dog law. They passed the law a few months ago and it was set to take effect in 2012 - but the council listened to constituents, dog owners and experts from their community and repealed the ban before it took effect. You can see more here.
Meanwhile, another St. Louis area suburb is also looking to repeal their breed-specific law. On December 7, Wentzville, MO is planning on addressing the law after many residents came forward and said the law was too restricitive by requiring affected dogs to be in an outside kennel unless it was leashed and muzzled and if the dog was inside the house, the windows could not be open.
This form of forced isolation actually decreases socialization and has a net negative impact on public safety.
Several residents noted either considering moving from the city or have alread moved from the city. One alderman, Chris Gard, has noted that he wants to eliminate the breed-specific requirements. "With the information we have today, it is difficult to write breed-specific laws," said Gard. "It is much easier to write better laws that are not breed-specific. I think the board will see that in our discussion." The evidence of the difficulty they're having with breed identification can be seen here with a picture of two dogs that were declared to be 'pit bulls' under the law. Neither has reportedly been involved in any aggessive incidents. Good luck to the great folks in Wentzville in closing this deal.
Meanwhile, in Ohio, the state Senate heard testimony for HB 14 -- a bill that would remove their state-wide breed-specific legislation. Rep Barbara Sears helped push this bill through the Ohio House -- where it passed by a vote of 69-29 earlier this year. She testified for the bill earlier this week. Heck, even country music legend Willie Nelson testified in support of HB 14 -- calling the breed-specific law "archaic".
The bill is designed to create designations for "nuissance", "dangerous", "vicious" based on their behaviors, not breed -- and also adds in due process language (which doesn't exist in their current law). This is the start of a couple of month long process in Ohio to hopefully eliminate the only state-wide breed-specific law in the U.S.
Can you feel the momentum? It used to take an entire year to get this many repeals and progress toward repeals....now, all of this has happened just in the past 6 weeks.
Attitudes are changing, and people are realizing that breed discriminatory laws are not an effective solution to the dangerous dog problems. It's great to see, and good luck to those who are making forward progress in their communities.
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