So on Sunday there was a viewable debate on WNIT public television out of South Bend, Indiana regarding Pit Bulls, breed-discriminatory legislation, and all of the issues that arise when discussing these topics. This show was entitled “Politically Speaking: Pets or Property?” and was also made available on their website, although for unknown reasons the video is now down. Featured in the talk was South Bend City Council Representatives Fred Ferlic and Valerie Schey, and Professor of Law at Valparaiso University Rebecca Huss.
While Ms. Schey and Ms. Huss repeatedly attempted to call for common sense alternatives to non-working and non-lawful breed-discriminatory legislation, Mr. Ferlic took the opposite approach, doubling down on vague generalities and stereotyping in mass.
Please look at some of these quotes, and I hope they will bring the video back online. If not, I have a copy of it so it is definitely not lost forever.
At 16:51 Mr. Ferlic says this (in reference to Pit Bulls): “They’re basically a walking time-bomb.”
At 25:35 Mr. Ferlic says this: “The problem we have here is the people that own these dogs, greater than 50% of them they estimate, are not law-abiding citizens.”
At 26:33 Mr. Ferlic says this: “The conclusion is that 50% of our Pit Bulls are owned by societal misfits.”
At 43:32 Mr. Ferlic says this: “50% of the owners of Pit Bulls are societal misfits, whether you like that or not.”
He then immediately follows ^that latest assertion about Pit Bull owners being misfits with this interesting statement: “Same way in Chicago, they have the strictest gun laws in the country yet they had the most crime. If you don’t enforce the law it’s not going to work.”
Um, true! Why? Because criminals don’t follow laws. Only law-abiding people are affected by bans on anything, and in this context, innocent dogs and their owners are the ones affected. Bad owners, and thus the behavior of their now illegal dogs (or legal, if they’ve moved to another breed), are not. They keep doing what they are doing because nothing being done is targeting their individual behavior, and the laws that already exist, meant to do just that, are never enforced! Leash laws, anti-chaining laws, existing “dangerous dog” laws for all breeds. On top of those, then you can create or strengthen laws that give stiff penalties to owners who are found to be wreckless with their dog or dogs. This would at least identify these individuals and give you the option of ending the cycle of behavior from that individual. This gun analogy (that Ferlic himself uses) discredits his entire argument in 2 different ways, while validating what the other ladies had been saying up to that point, in full.
At 44:30 a caller asks Ferlic how can he possibly claim that the majority of all ER visitors and plastic surgeon patients are “victims of Pit Bull bites,” when it’s a proven fact that visual identification (even by self-proclaimed experts) fails over 70% of the time?
Mr. Ferlic’s response: “You can say what Justice Stuart Potter said, you know, he couldn’t describe what pornography was but he knew it when he saw it. Okay? If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, waves its head like a duck, it’s a duck!”
Finally, at 50:35 Mr. Ferlic tries to disparage Pit Bulls who are service animals… He says: “But how many people actually use a Pit Bull, that are disabled? I treat disabled people every day, they come into my office with dogs, things like that, I, uh, it’s, you could count them on your hand basically, in South Bend, the number of people who have Pit Bulls.”
Rebecca Huss’s response…
One of the issues with service animals is that we have more and more people who are using service animals that don’t have apparent disabilities, right? I’m thinking primarily of veterans that have post-traumatic stress disorder. They don’t have to have a Labrador or a Golden Retriever. They could have a Pit Bull-type dog or they could have a Poodle, or they could have a small furry dog that is trained to do worker-performed tasks to assist in their disability.
Didn’t think Fred Ferlic could get any worse? Think again: “That’s the debate. I think they’re better off with another type of dog than a Pit Bull.”
Rebecca Huss…
There was a case in Iowa of a former Chicago police officer, a veteran, who had a stroke and the small town he was in had breed-discriminatory language in its ordinance. And there was a priliminary injunction found that said that the town was unlikely to prevail in the American’s With Disabilities Act. They ended up settling, because you cannot, with the Americans With Disabilities Act, discriminate based on breed.
So who in the hell does Fred Ferlic think he is? Who died, made him God, and is now allowing him to dictate what other people are “better off” with? The arrogance from this creature is clear. He also went to the porno well, much like Dr. Drusys did during the Riverside County Board of Supervisors meeting. Complete and utter idiocy, taking subjective things and claiming to know everything about everything. Again, arrogance. And finally, he called over half of all of the Pit Bull owners in this country “societal misfits” and criminals. Wow. Wow. Wow.
Everyone keeps pointing to different “statistics,” the speakers, the callers, and especially Fred Ferlic. Yet no one wants to talk about the most important statistic of all: That 99.9999999999999% of all Pit Bulls, of all dogs in general, and no matter the breakdown, have never done anything to anyone!