January 29th, 2013 by Editor

Last Sunday, an 11-year-old boy in Washington D.C. was reportedly attacked by three “pit bulls” and then rescued by a Good Samaritan, who shot one of the dogs, and a bike patrol officer who shot the other two.  Now the Good Samaritan may face gun charges if you can believe it, courtesy of D.C.’s ridiculous gun law.  Gee, didn’t District of Columbia v. Heller already address D.C.’s unconstitutional gun law and didn’t D.C. lose?  And if the 2nd Amendment can be upheld for purposes of self-defense, then what about our moral obligation to protect others?  Even the boy’s uncle said the Good Samaritan did the right thing.

Perhaps the prosecution is just posturing because the boy was accidentally shot in the foot (although I have yet to see the media say who shot the boy in the foot, the Good Samaritan, the police officer, or someone else).  And I say the boy was “reportedly attacked” by “pit bulls” because lately when the media reports a “pit bull” attack, the dogs in question are often some kind of mastiff.  See, it wasn’t enough for them to malign American Pit Bull Terriers, American Staffordshire Terriers, and Staffordshire Terriers, the dogs heretofore most commonly mislabeled “pit bulls.”  No, now “pit bulls” have come to mean 80-100 pound mastiffs too.  Read the rest of this entry »

January 25th, 2013 by Editor

The good news about people doing bad things is that they are getting more foolish.  So when people try to pull a switcheroo and attempt to employ Orwellian newspeak but they’re bad at it, it makes it easier to expose them. (Kind of like have you ever noticed how political correctness is billed as a form of enlightenment but in actuality it’s just an elevated form of censorship?)  I don’t give much credence to “writers” on the Patch, the Examiner (And doesn’t that make them sound legitimate and even authoritative? Yeah, not so much.), or Opposing Views, but this little gem on Opposing Views caught my eye yesterday: Tough BSL Law Protects Pit Bulls in Fayette, MO .  Um, what?

So the latest propaganda piece is that breed-specific legislation (BSL) protects “pit bulls”?  Again, the Orwellian newspeak or double-speak or whatever you want to call it is unmistakeable: Good is bad, and bad is good.  Luckily for us, the newspeakers are bad at newspeaking.

Still, let’s reason this one out just for funsies.  So if I understand correctly, according to Fayette, “breed bans protect ‘pit bulls’”?  The same breed bans that unconstitutionally restrict that non-existent “breed” you call “pit bull,” that result in untold numbers of owner relinquishments thereby burdening the already overrun local shelters and animal controls, that make it impossible to adopt out and find homes for the number of now unwanted “pit bulls” in addition to the number of unwanted “pit bulls” there were before the onerous unconstitutional breed ban was passed, and that make it impossible to own any future “pit bulls” thereby making it a possible death sentence for any “pit bull” within a 50-100 mile radius?  This, according to Fayette, Missouri, is what “protects” “pit bulls”?  Read the rest of this entry »

January 24th, 2013 by Editor

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.  A guy walks into a court room along with his poser attorney, presents a purposely weak case, and actually sets a precedent for the very thing he claims to be fighting against.  Perhaps this “joke” will ring a bell if I bring it a little closer to home for the dog lobby.  There was this organization in the 80s and 90s that claimed to be opposed to breed-specific legislation, and they went around trying purposely weak cases to actually set a precedent for breed bans because they weren’t really opposed to breed bans; they were really aligned with the same radical animal “rights” group that was surreptitiously pushing breed-specific legislation (BSL) all across the country.

When another organization got wise to what the bad organizations were up to, they started legally challenging BSL properly and they started winning.  The good organization challenged the very definition of what is a so-called “pit bull,” proving over and over again that the vague term “pit bull” did not embody a breed, but rather was an ambiguous term that could describe unknown numbers of actual dog breeds, and that because there was no one breed “pit bull,” statistics on so-called “pit bulls” were wildly skewed and therefore meaningless.  Then out the window went the argument that this “breed” “pit bull” was more inherently aggressive or vicious than other breeds such that the doggy-killers could no longer “prove” that banning “pit bulls” was supposedly “rationally related” to public health, welfare, and safety. Read the rest of this entry »

January 24th, 2013 by Editor

A few years ago, when there was rampant fallout and internet spewing against Michael Vick, I (gulp) argued for Vick’s due process rights — i.e. that he not be tried in the court of public opinion, but rather that he be tried in a court of law.  I even went so far as to (gulp) say that radical animal rights groups would use Vick as a shill to push for their oppressive and unconstitutional legislation.  I got a lot of flak* for that from rabid animal rightists too, but it turns out that those in the dog lobby brave enough to stand up against the animal rightists’ lies were right on both fronts.  Vick was tried by a proper court of law, found guilty, and sent to prison.  Voilà, due process, and the system worked.  And the dog lobby was also right that no sooner had Vick left prison and the radical animal rights group the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) began using Vick as a shill to legitimize themselves as so-called “experts” in combating dog fighting and to push more of their onerous, rights-negating, and oppressive legislation. Read the rest of this entry »