Doggone Wrong

In TheStar.com is this following article. What I didn't like was the reporter addind his two cents worth at the end. It's his job to report. PERIOD!

Doggone wrong
Feb. 13, 2006. 01:00 AM

Ontario's pit bull ban is attracting fire from a celebrated source: Malcolm Gladwell. The expatriate Canadian has written the best-sellers Blink and The Tipping Point, and is named by Time magazine as one of its 100 most influential people.
In a recent edition of The New Yorker magazine, Gladwell takes aim at the pit bull ban approved by Queen's Park a year ago. But, this time, the author, who is hailed as "an all-out international phenomenon," shoots wide of his target.
Gladwell claims that banning pit bulls constitutes a form of unfair and ineffective "profiling" — essentially a canine variant of racial profiling. But it is a misguided argument.
Gladwell says a "pit bull" is hard to define since it isn't a single breed but a combination of aggressive strains. Thus any law banning these animals is bound to be vague and generalized.
Statistics show that many breeds are more aggressive to humans than animals commonly deemed pit bulls. Beagles, Airedales, most varieties of dachshund, and other dogs are more inclined to bite and hurt people.
Finally, the presence of a vicious pit bull in a neighbourhood says more about the dog's owner than about these dogs as a group. It is maintained that bad owners are the real problem — people who are bullies, negligent and who deliberately seek to possess fear-inducing dogs.
All of these concerns are correct.
It is, indeed, hard to define all possible pit bull mixes, and new and savage variants could arise. But as problem animals surface, their names can be added to the list of those banned.
Difficulty in defining a problem is no reason not to address it.
Dachshunds and other breeds are, indeed, more likely to bite. But a rampaging wiener dog is unlikely to rip a child's throat out, or disembowel another canine. Pit bulls have, all too often, done both. Bred to fight and kill, when a pit bull goes wild the consequences are so severe that these animals warrant unusual restriction, even though they may be less likely to bite overall.
Finally, bad owners are, indeed, largely to blame when pit bulls go bad. Rather than banning this class of dog, Gladwell's solution is to subject bad owners to extra rules and attention. People who are irresponsible should have their dangerous dogs neutered, or subject to mandatory muzzling, he says. And bylaw control officers should "track down" and monitor these owners to ensure they are obeying the rules.
In short, Gladwell wants to "profile" bad owners with violence-prone dogs. The problem here is that it's hard to establish the combination of aggressive dog and irresponsible owner until tragedy strikes. And it's hard to keep long-term track of bad owners and their pets.
Ontario's pit bull ban is a far more effective way to proceed. All animals deemed pit bulls are required to be neutered, and muzzled in public. Bad owners are held responsible for the abuses done by their dogs. And owners who deliberately seek bellicose dogs are hampered by the ban on breeding or importing pit bulls.
It isn't a perfect law. It won't eliminate dog attacks. But it does offer some protection where very little existed before.