To send the following letter to the Halifax, Nova Scotia city council, just fill in your email address at the end, and click Send Now. 

Waye Mason. CC BY 4.0

I’m a supporter for a national dog attack victim’s group dedicated to reducing serious dog attacks and supporting victims – National Pit Bull Victim Awareness.

I’m writing to ask you to consider protecting Halifax Region’s citizens with Breed Safety Laws (BSL) that ban or severely restrict pit bull ownership.

The purpose of Breed Safety Laws is to reduce the number of catastrophic severe injuries caused by pit bull-type dogs. Please see examples of BSL bylaws for more than 200 cities and towns in Canada. There are many precedents you can review, and perhaps contact some of the towns that have previously struggled with this issue  https://www.nationalpitbullvictimawareness.org/pit-bull-bans-in-canada/

Pit bulls are in a unique category by themselves and they merit special restrictions. We believe communities have the right and duty to protect the public with laws targeting certain types of animals. Medical studies and expert opinions from doctors consistently conclude that attacks by pit bull-type dogs result in disproportionate damage compared to other types of dogs.

Please see an extensive list of articles in peer-reviewed medical journals describing the disproportionate damage and deaths by pit bulls compared to all other types of dogs. https://www.nationalpitbullvictimawareness.org/articles/medical-studies-on-pit-bulls

We choose to believe the doctors, surgeons and medical professionals who have authored these studies, and who say that pit bulls are an emerging public health crisis. We do not trust humane society staff, volunteers and professional pit bull advocates employed by large animal rights organizations who financially profit from pit bulls in various ways starting with adoption fees. We feel they no longer can be trusted to have the public’s best interest at heart.

There are thousands of advocates across the country, including lawyers, veterinarians, and lobby groups, who swear to legislators that pit bull type dogs – the very dogs they advocate for — cannot be identified. In fact, courts have ruled on several occasions that a dog owner of ordinary intelligence can visually identify a pit bull, and there are countless books, TV shows and websites devoted to pit bulls.

Enormous damage has resulted from the promotion of pit bull type dogs as safe family and community pets. We strongly oppose the efforts of shelters and rescue groups to promote these animals as community-safe pets.

We reject the mantra that serious attacks are owing to “bad owners.” There are over 300 breeds of dogs that might be neglected and abused, but which do not turn on people or kill other animals as a result.

We believe the growing crisis in serious pit bull attacks is caused by people being sold a dangerously false bill of goods by animal rescues and promoters. If this were any other consumer product, there would already be recalls and class action lawsuits.

Breed neutral laws are not the answer. And if any education at all is to be promoted, it should be aimed at the people who feel pit bulls are “misunderstood” in order to inform them about the public health and safety dangers of pit bulls.

Your citizens look to you to promote and protect public health and safety. Please do not listen to animal groups who put pit bull welfare ahead of people. Please consider putting in place Breed Safety Laws to keep your voters safe from the totally unnecessary risk of pit bulls in their lives.

To view the scope of the growing crisis of pit bull attacks in the US and Canada, please take a moment to look at our attack database. All attacks reported by the media since 2016 can be found here. By comparing the number of attacks reported by the media to numbers obtained from dozens of cities through Freedom of Information requests, we estimate there are as many as 40 times the number of attacks not reported by the media. https://www.nationalpitbullvictimawareness.org/attacks/pit-bull-attack-database-keyword

For more information, please find extensive information on our website https://www.nationalpitbullvictimawareness.com or contact the editor at editor@nationalpitbullvictimawareness.com