Late Night Musings: Kansas City KS Repeals 29 year old ban on Pit Bulls

Tonight, by a 6-3 vote of the County Commission, the community of Kansas City, KS repealed it's ban on pit bull type dogs. The ban had stood since 1990. There have been several previous attempts to repeal the ban -- but the mounting evidence of the ineffectiveness of the law it finally met its demise. It was time.

Over the months of discussion regarding the repeal, several key themes arose:

1) The city had passed a very strong, breed neutral dangerous dog law in 2014 -- making the ban on pit bulls at best obsolete, at worst, a drain on limited resources to enforce the breed neutral law.

2) Based on data provided by the city leadership, nearly a quarter of the city's $1 million animal control budget was being spent on enforcing the ban. This cost includes calls on non-aggressive dogs that were mistakenly identified as pit bulls. It includes a disproportionate number of pit bulls entering the shelter due to them being illegal in the city. And it includes an increased average length of stay for pit bulls at the shelter because they cannot be rehomed back into the community.

3) A coalition of rescue organizations has dedicated a significant amount of private dollars in helping the community bridge the gap and that has been important for the community. 

Because animal control is already strapped for funding, this increased cost of enforcing the ban was actually making it more challenging to enforce the dangerous dog law, round up loose/off-leash dogs, and respond to neglect complaints (more to come on this).

In the end, the the city made the decision to repeal the ban on pit bulls, making them the 28th city in the state of Kansas to repeal their bans as these archaic laws slowly fall out of favor. Congrats to the city, to the advocates, and to the residents of KCK on their repeal. The local advocates did an amazing job of educating the majority of the county commission, organizing locals to speak knowledgeably (and not repetitively) on the subject, and ensure that all of their "yes" votes made it to the commission meeting this evening.