Tag: Aurora

Success! Aurora, Colorado Ends 15-Year Pit Bull Ban


In November the good people of Denver did the right thing and overwhelmingly voted to end the city’s 31-year ban on Pit Bulls, mixes and dogs that happen to look like Pit Bulls. Perhaps inspired by this, the city council of Aurora, Colorado’s third-largest city which is about 9 miles east of Denver, voted 7-3 on Jan. 11 to end its 15-year ban on these dogs.

Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman initially proposed a ballot measure to lift the ban, but residents wouldn’t be able to vote on it until next November, the Denver Post reports. Fortunately, instead of having to wait that long, city council members decided to vote on repealing the ban.

Starting next month, Aurora residents can own Pit Bull Terriers, American Staffordshire Terriers and Staffordshire Bull Terriers. Before the ban was ended, dogs that were more than 51 percent of these breeds were not allowed in the city. (I wonder how that percentage was determined…?)

Breed-specific legislation (BSL) — unfair laws, including breed bans, that single out dogs only because of how they look — has proven to be ineffective in increasing public safety and expensive to enforce wherever it’s been enacted. Thank you, Aurora City Council, for realizing this and ending your city’s ban.

Up next in Colorado to consider ending its Pit Bull ban is Commerce City. A decision is expected there later this month, according to the Denver Post. (Update: On Jan. 15 the Commerce City Council voted to end the ban!)

Last week in Denver, a handsome 3-year-old Pit Bull named Gumdrop, who’d been picked up as a stray, became the first of his breed to be adopted out by the Denver Animal Shelter since 1989. A Colorado Springs family saw his photo and drove an hour to the shelter to adopt him, Denver Department of Public Health & Environment spokesperson Kyle Wagner told PEOPLE. Gumdrop’s name has been changed to Odin.

Here’s wishing Odin and his new forever family many years of happiness together. And a huge thank you to the Aurora City Council members whose votes will help save the lives of many more adoptable dogs.

We are so excited to celebrate the first Pit Bull adoption since the new breed ordinance! ???❤️ ⁠
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Gumdrop was so happy…

Posted by Denver Animal Shelter on Tuesday, January 5, 2021

Photo: Those were my first two Pitties, Sophie and Larry, enjoying a mind meld.

‘Dangerous’ Pit Bulls Are Still Banned in Aurora (But Assault Rifles and Glocks Are Not)

Voters in Aurora, Colo., overwhelmingly decided yesterday not to repeal the city’s nine-year-old ban on Pit Bulls. As of 6 a.m. this morning, 66 percent of them had voted to keep the ban.

Yet you can still purchase assault rifles and Glock pistols in local sporting goods stores, as Aurora resident James Holmes did before shooting down moviegoers in July 2012, killing 12 and wounding 58 — however, Pit Bulls are “dangerous,” and continue to be banned from the city.

Breed-specific legislation (BSL) — laws that single out a particular breed instead of placing responsibility on dog owners — is opposed by every major animal welfare organization, including the ASPCA, AVMA, HSUS, etc., etc., as well as by the president of the United States, who called it a “bad idea.” It is expensive to enforce and has not proven to increase public safety.

So why did the majority of Aurora voters decide to keep the city’s Pit Bull ban?

“I personally think it’s an uphill battle to win a repeal via a public vote, generally because if a ban is in place, most of the residents have had very little personal interaction with the banned breeds and thus, are more apt to have to rely on the media coverage as the basis for their opinions,” wrote Brent Toellner, co-founder of KC Pet Project, the nation’s third-largest no-kill shelter, on the Huffington Post.

“To this point, the area media has not been terribly accurate in their reporting.”

As always, leading the support of the ban — and bans everywhere — was DogBites.org (start typing that in Google, and what automatically pops up is “DogBites.org bias,” “DogBites.org bullshit,” “DogBites.org scam” — you get the picture).

This lobbying organization that spews twisted statistics is run by one woman, Colleen Lynn, who was bitten by a Pit Bull. (I wish she could meet Donna Lawrence, who was also bitten by a chained Pit Bull. Instead of bitterly wanting to ban the entire breed, Lawrence rescued an abused Pit mix named Susie, and they both helped each other heal — and Susie, now a therapy dog, continues to help others heal. Susie is this year’s winner of the American Humane Association’s Hero Dog Award.)

Lynn is by no means a dog expert, yet the mainstream media continues to report the “facts” she provides, without bothering to dig a little deeper to uncover the truth.

As Lynn points out, Pit Bull bites have decreased since the Aurora ban went into effect — but animal control officers have been ignoring bites by other breeds, which have increased, according to Juliet Piccone, president of Coloradans for Breed Neutral Dog Laws Inc.

“If the goal is to prevent dog bites, it’s not working,” Piccone told the Denver Post. “If the goal is to prevent dog bites from restricted breeds, they can say, ‘Yes, that’s happening.’ ”

City officials told the Denver Post that Piccone was incorrect — but they did not provide the actual statistics.

For the majority of us who feel BSL is unfair and ineffective, the good news is that the trend across the country has been to repeal breed-specific legislation.

“While disappointment is part of the game, it does not signal the end,” wrote the advocacy group ColoRADogs on its Facebook page last night. “Twenty-three thousand people voted NO to hysteria, NO to social disapproval and NO to discrimination.”

Photo via Facebook

 

 

 

 

 

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