The home secretary is seeking "urgent advice" about banning American XL Bully dogs as footage shows one of the animals attacking an 11-year-old girl and a man in Birmingham. Suella Braverman has said the animals are a "clear and lethal" danger after the video of the attack in Bordesley Green emerged on the social media platform TikTok. West Midlands Police are investigating after two men, who were bitten and left with injuries to their shoulders and arms, were taken to hospital to be treated for their injuries after the incident on Saturday.
The problem with “don’t ban them but don’t let them breed more” and allow people that have one to just carry on is you just create a potentially lucrative black market for these dogs (in fact you doing that might make them more sought after), which doesn’t actually fix any problems.
Not necessarily advocating killing animals because they’re inconvenient but ultimately if they’re going to be a problem (and it certainly seems like that’s the case) then the sooner they’re banned the less harm is inflicted overall.
Black market for dogs that shouldn’t exist anymore after 10 years? What would you do with a dog you couldn’t take out of the house? Where’s the demand? I can’t imagine pitbull junkies selling everything they own just to get one more pup either
Well the black market doesn’t exist because it’s not legal to own a pitbull - as you say, who wants a dog they can’t take outside?
My point is if you ban breeding but you don’t ban owning the dog then you risk creating that black market.
You only allow people who already own a banned dog to keep it. After a few years it will become obvious that anybody who owns a young illegal dog must have purchased it after the ban.
I get the concept but the downside of banning sales without banning ownership is it will have zero immediate effect, risks creating a black market in the short term. It may even increase the demand for those dogs (see the increase in gun sales in the US when there’s a threat of legislation).
So I can’t imagine any reasonable government supporting that approach.
I don’t think there is a proper short term solution to this problem. At least dogs don’t live forever. A gun bought now can still be used to shoot somebody in a hundred years, a pitbull, on the other hand, has an average life expectancy of 12-14 years.
I mean. The short term solution is to ban them.