Gun Control and Breed Specific Legislation. Same problem, same solution. Neither works.

If you don't own a dog you may not know what Breed Specific Legislation (BSL) is about, but if you own a gun you certainly know by now what Gun Control is. The problem is that both are about the same thing, the liberal methodology for handling problems. Believe it or not guns and dogs have something in common. They both do what the owner wants them to do, either good or bad. Liberals don't see things that way. If a Pit Bull attacks someone - liberals say we must ban all Pit Bulls. If a deranged individual shoots someone with a gun - liberals all say we must ban guns. Gun ownership and dog ownership are both a matter of individual responsibility. The truth of the matter is that guns don't kill people, people do. I like to tell the story about a character I call Joe Sixpack. Joe sits on his front porch every night and drinks a six pack of beer, Joe owns a Pit Bull, keeps it chained up to a tree and likes to brag to his neighbors that he has the biggest, meanest dog in the neighborhood. Once in awhile Joe is careless and his Pit Bull gets loose and attacks someone. Everyone blames Joe's dog but no one blames Joe for making the dog as vicious as it is. Joe could and probably does own a gun besides owning a Pit Bull and he is just as irresponsible with the gun as he is with his dog. Because Joe is a mean person, who may even have some psychological problems, he is also mean to his dog and he mistreats it to make it vicious. If Joe gets drunk and takes out his gun and shoots up his neighborhood, Joe will get arrested but the politicians will also blame Joe's gun for the crime.

Why BSL and Gun Control are both unfair and why they both don't work.

Joe Sixpack is the epitome of cruelty and irresponsibility and should never be allowed to own a gun or any kind of dog, especially a powerful animal like a Pit Bull. But it isn't the dog's fault that it behaves the way it does. Joe's dog is mistreated and unloved and most likely on purpose because Joe wants the dog to be mean. While Joe is a hypothetical character, there are many people just like him in real life. One of them is Michael Vick a professional football player who owned dozens of Pit Bulls and trained them for dog fighting. Vick's Pit Bulls were all abused and mistreated in order to keep them in mean fighting shape. After Michael Vick was arrested his ferocious Pit Bulls were taken from him and placed in a rehab facility and within a year of receiving lots of love and kind treatment all of those 45 Pit Bulls were adopted out to loving families. You can read about their story on the web site Bad Rap: http://www.badrap.org/vick-dogs and Sports Illustrated and here is another story on ABC News.

Nov 9, 2012 5:41pm

Rescued Michael Vick Dogs Reunited 5 Years Later

Image Credit: Mark Rogers/www.markrogersphotography.com

They were battered and bruised but, ultimately, they were not broken.

Seven dogs rescued from NFL quarterback Michel Vick’s Virginia property when he pleaded guilty to federal charges relating to dog fighting, were reunited in California Oct. 27, tails wagging, tongues out, happy.

Five years ago they had scars, some physical, all emotional. They wore bandannas at their reunion celebration, surrounded by 125 emotional guests and their proud owners.

“They’re very forgiving and they all really enjoy other dogs, which is probably the other big surprise that came out of the case,” said Donna Reynolds, director of Oakland-based BAD RAP, an advocacy group for “pit bull-type” dogs. “In fact, dogs were a comfort to them.”

Read the rest at ABC News:

The moral of that story is obvious. No breed of dog is born vicious, they are made that way by irresponsible and evil people but liberals fail to understand such obvious examples. To a liberal, capitalizing on tragedies like a dog attack or Sandy Hook Elementary School or Aurora, Colorado builds good public relations and gets lots of votes so liberal lawmakers are the first to raise the concerns about Public Safety whenever something bad happens, be it a dog attack or a shooting. The NRA once ran a really good television ad that showed a politician who starts off by saying "I support the Second Amendment" then, reacting to a shooting incident, he cries out that "We must do something to stop the violence" then he says "We must ban the ownership of guns". And that was before we got Barack Hussein Obama.

The self-appointed state run leftist news media that has always agreed with the Marxist/Socialist rule that citizens should not be allowed to have guns, continues to ignore statistical evidence that shows that law-abiding citizens who own guns do more to prevent gun violence than the criminals who commit them. Those areas where there are fewer gun restrictions have lower crime rates than places like Chicago or Detroit that have greater gun restrictions. Only once in awhile will the news media report about some case where a mother hid in a closet protecting her children with a handgun and shot a violent criminal. There are thousands of similar stories where a legally owned gun prevented a crime.

Mother of two protects children from home invader, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, Atlanta, Ga. 01/04/13

Posted on January 8, 2013

A mother of two was home with her children in Loganville, Ga. when she heard a repeated knocking at the door. Concerned, the mother called her husband, who told her to “get the kids and hide.” The mother complied, retrieving a gun and taking her children to a crawlspace. By the time they were hidden, the criminal who had been knocking at the door had made it inside the house and was making his way towards the closet where the family was hiding. The home invader opened the crawlspace door, at which point the mother fired six shots from a .38-caliber revolver, striking the criminal five times. The mother kept the revolver trained on the home invader as he exited the house.

In the dog world people who oppose BSL use the phrase, "Punish the deed not the breed" which makes a lot of sense when you think about it. In the act of punishing the deed the owner of the vicious dog must be taken into account and how responsible and caring he was or was not. If the lawmakers prosecuted the irresponsible dog owners for the attacks made by their dogs, there soon would be no more dog attacks. If the lawmakers and/or the news media acknowledged that almost all of the mass murderers in recent history have had psychological problems and were taking psychotropic drugs or had stopped taking them, then the focus on the problem would be keeping these mentally ill people off the streets and not the guns which they possessed illegally.

The reason why Breed Specific Legislation and Gun Control both do not work is the fact that criminals have one more thing in common with Joe Sixpack - they do not obey the law. When a community passes a ban on a specific breed of dog the only ones who will give up their dogs are the law-abiding people who loved and cared for their dogs and who were not the cause of the problem in the first place. Vicious dogs are owned by some people for more than bragging rights. They are sometimes owned by criminals such as drug dealers who use them to protect their property. I personally know something about that because I own a Rottweiler who was born in the Bowling Green Humane Shelter after her parents were picked up by the State Police. Back in 2002 the Kentucky State Police raided a drug dealer who had a pair of Rottweilers guarding his property. The drug dealer made the mistake of assuming all Rottweilers were vicious because of their unfounded bad reputation when he got the dogs for protection. The male and female Rottweilers had different ideas and treated the police raid like company coming for a visit and because they were so gentle they were put in the shelter. With the exception of the present day situation that contemplates a national gun ban promoted by a wannabe totalitarian government, where millions of law-abiding citizens will likely refuse to surrender their guns for patriotic reasons, criminals who have little regard for any laws would never turn in their guns either. And neither do the drug dealers care about laws that would ban their Pit Bulls or any other powerful breed of dog they may use to guard their illegal enterprises.

If the national news media acknowledged the true purpose of the Second Amendment as our Founding Fathers conceived it, that an armed citizenry is the best and last resort to prevent tyranny, then the arguments of the gun control proponents would be realized for what they truly are.

My name is Nelson Abdullah and I am Oldironsides.