Upon trying to further research PETA last night I came across a 2001 Daily Press article from Newport News, Virginia that exemplifies the environment at which many of these entrenched players have continued to somehow stay relevant. It reminds me of Los Angeles, it reminds me of lots of places that I read about. Much of this type of a system is broken.

Surry County officials this week put 18 Pit Bulls to sleep, more than 5 months after officials seized them from a Surry County man believed to be involved in dogfighting.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which had been closely watching the case, praised county officials for putting the dogs out of their misery.

‘I’m just relieved that they will never be forced to fight again,’ said Daphna Nachminovitch, a caseworker for the group. ‘It’s finally over.’

The case against Ben Butts, who has faced a variety of felony and misdemeanor charges of training dogs for fighting, came to an end last week with the signing of a pact on February 7th. Commonwealth’s Attorney General Poindexter agreed that the county wouldn’t pursue charges against Butts if he wouldn’t train dogs for sport or show for the next 5 years.

Authorities seized 33 dogs from Butts during a September 6th raid on his home. But 10 dogs impounded in Suffolk animal shelter all died, and 4 housed in Isle of Wight County animal shelter were stolen a few days later.

In December, a General District Court judge dismissed charges against Butts because officers learned about the dogs only after conducting a previous drug raid on the property without a search warrant.

With the agreement, Butts took one dog, Bozo, home, claiming in court that it was a house pet that belonged to his daughter.

Animal Control Officer Derrick Moore put the remaining 18 dogs to sleep Wednesday and Thursday.

So we have a dogfighting bust, where 18 dogs are seized and apparently not given any option of rehabilitation, instead being held for 5 months and eventually killed at the behest of an “animal welfare” group that nefariously lobbies for incrementally phasing out every Pit Bull in the United States. The alleged perpetrator of the fighting mess then signs a pact that states that he’ll stay away from dogs for the next 5 years. Why a pact? Because the department illegally raided his house without a warrant and they needed to cut a deal to save their case. Then 14 of the 33 dogs that were seized either die or go missing under, and all while under the care of 2 separate shelters. No further explanation or investigation follows that. Then they let the pact-signer, who is allegedly a dog fighter, take 1 of the dogs home. Then they kill the rest of the dogs and PETA claims they “hated” advocating for the dogs death, yet that’s what they ultimately chose to do in the face of doing anything else. To top everything off, Gerald Poindexter (Commonwealth’s Attorney General) was the same bumbling cronie that was involved throughout the Michael Vick fiasco of 2007. Gerald fucking Poindexter!!

Pasadena City Councilman Steve Madison, who’s known here for his extreme desire to see Pit Bulls banned, recently had some disparaging words for bigoted Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling. This, taken from a photo caption showing himself at game 5 of the Clippers and Warriors series…

Wearing black to support the players and to oppose that idiot and his bigotry. 30 years after Al Campanis. It’s outrageous that that mindset still exists. Go Clips!

“That mindset”? Just curious, what mindset do you speak of?

Do you mean placing a preconceived and sweeping opinion upon an entire group of individuals that is not based on reason, evidence or actual experience? That mindset? Do you mean scapegoating an entire group of individuals for crimes that they didn’t commit, and based solely on how they appear? That mindset? Do you mean having an unreasonable attitude that is highly resistant to reality, rational influence, facts or science? That mindset?

Because it’s clear to me that Mr. Madison cannot seem to grasp that his own abhorrent views towards Pit Bulls are highly prejudicial, and are being spewed by him quite consistently after he uses the same process of thought.

These quotes were made available to numerous media outlets in the days following the collapse of his proposed legislation, which was meant to target and vilify all dogs deemed to be Pit Bulls…

Councilman Steve Madison, from 1/27/2014:

I don’t want my kids or parents or anybody in between to have to deal with that risk. People say they have perfectly nice Pit Bulls and I don’t doubt that, but that’s like me saying I have a rocket launcher in my attic but I don’t use it.”

Councilman Steve Madison, from 1/28/2014:

The folks that were there, they have this notion that there is something called discrimination against particular dog breeds, but there really isn’t. Fully automatic machine guns don’t have any right to be discriminated against, they are inherently dangerous and that’s why we forbid them.

Councilman Steve Madison, from 1/29/2014:

This is going to happen, that was the whole point of my work on this issue over the last couple of years. They are just a time bomb. They are killing machines.

Councilman Steve Madison, from 1/29/2014:

I’ve been working on Pit Bulls for years, everybody says ‘let’s just study the issue.’ We don’t need to study this anymore. This is a clear and present danger and we need to act now. I’ll be happy to discuss spay and neutering parakeets and lizards and goldfish and all the rest, but right now those aren’t the threats. The threats are Pit Bulls.

You cannot ban ignorance. It is a describing word. You cannot have a war on ignorance or a war on hate any more than you can have a war on terror, as they are all adjectives. Describing words are subjective labels given to something by somebody. There’s no consistency in defining such a thing.

When you get into legislation meant to police “hate speech,” you leave everything up for an incredible level of interpretation. Another dynamic of this that would be vastly important is who is thus defining something as hate, and what is their potential agenda, as 1 person’s definition of “hate” or “offensive” wouldn’t match the next person’s definition. It’s a subjective topic no matter what, left up to the whim of some random person or a group of people. This is precisely what the 1st Amendment is for, to protect all speech, because if you take certain speech away then you begin to go down a path that just keeps extending itself. This would most certainly lead to the selective enforcement of such a law, one primary example being that it could be used to squash and criminalize political dissent.

On 4/16 such legislation was introduced by Senator Edward Markey (S. 2219) and Congressman Hakeem Jeffries (H.R. 3878), calling for examining the role that telecommunications plays in encouraging hate crimes. Can someone please define “encouraging”? Of course, there were no specifics made available, and there won’t be. Instead the bill is ripe with open-endedness, as likely intended. So if you say something in the future that another person may deem controversial, you could potentially be swept up and blamed for a physical act that may have been perpetrated by a completely separate individual. These erroneous links could and would be made under such legislation. Do not be naive.

The Boston Herald put it best…

U.S. Senator Ed Markey wants to empower an obscure federal agency to begin scouring the internet, TV and radio for speech it finds threatening.

Bringing this into the realm of dog-related issues… I would not advocate for dog-hating psychopaths like Colleen Lynn of DogsBite.org or Dawn James of Craven Desires to be silenced or erased from the history of the internet. Why? Because I believe in the 1st Amendment and would not want to be silenced myself, or have anyone else silenced by someone who doesn’t agree with them. It is Colleen Lynn’s right to want to see Pit Bulls banned, and to lobby for their bans. It is Colleen Lynn’s right to spread lies and misinformation, fear and irrationality. It is Colleen Lynn’s right to say, both publicly and privately, that she wants to see shelter Pit Bulls dead and have all dogs looking like them euthanized out of existence. As repugnant and evil as those views are, she lives in America and she can have them.

You fight this awfulness by exposing it and by educating people on the opposite ideas. You fight this awfulness by promoting the truth, by showing prejudicial individuals for who they are, by having rational debate, by pointing out the human recklessness that’s almost always involved in incidents that are used after the fact to drive fear, and by delving far deeper into the many issues that so often scapegoat Pit Bulls and/or lead to their death.

Banning things doesn’t fix these problems. Banning dogs surely doesn’t fix them. You may not be able to define what kind of dog it is, but it’s still a dog; and a dog isn’t an adjective, it’s a noun that’s identifiable by categorizing a certain species. How would banning undefinable adjectives fix anything then? That’s an exercise in futility, as you will spend more time arguing over what is and what isn’t, and less time over promoting actual issue-related education and inclusiveness. Slogans don’t educate. Ending “ignorance” and “hate” in regards to dog breeds takes fleshing out the many issues that lead to that ignorance and hate.

One more thing… Ignorance is different than hate. Are you hatefully ignorant and bigoted or are you just uneducated on a specific issue? Because both types of people would technically fall under the phrasing of “ignorant,” would they not? Just know that the “uneducated on a specific issue or indifferent” portion of the population is colossally greater than the “hatefully ignorant and bigoted” portion of the population. So if you denigrate them equally by tossing around the phrasing of “ignorance” with little to no context, you run the risk of alienating the biggest group of genuine society.

To those advocating on behalf of Pit Bulls or any other type of dog, remember this: “The enemy of love is not hate, but fear.” ~ Gene Robinson.

It absolutely would not be a stretch to say that most people who claim to have certain negative feelings about Pit Bulls, that those feelings are actually rooted in fear and not hate. Even if they are adamant about their dislike, it’s usually fear that’s driving their concerns. Fear, lack of exposure, traveled information, populated rhetoric. You can’t ban fear either, or force someone to meet a dog. These concerns need acknowledged, empathized with, attempted to be understood. Go from there. When you respond to fear with anger you have little to no chance of reaching another person.

Colleen Lynn’s favorite journalist, if not the infamously inaccurate Merritt Clifton, has got to be Barbara Kay. Not so coincidentally Barbara Kay almost exclusively references “statistics” from Lynn’s anti-Pit Bull website, DogsBite.org. These are statistics that Lynn has either already gotten from Merritt Clifton, or has gathered herself using Clifton’s tactics of selectivity. Imagine that! Mr. Clifton derives his Pit Bull vilification “statistics” from selectively plucking information from media reports, and putting the faulty premise of cherry-picking through unverifiable data aside, I’d just note that media reports have proven to be quite unreliable when referencing incidents involving dogs and dog breeds.

Still, the bias is heavy. All 3 of these folks have got an unmistakeable ax to grind with any dog that they’ve deemed to be a Pit Bull. Like the sun rising every morning, Lynn and Clifton continue to maintain a hateful bias against millions of dogs, and it’s based solely on how those dogs appear to them and nothing else. Barbara Kay is a follower of such imbecility.

Speaking of bias, this brings me to confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is basically the act of surrounding yourself with people that serve to reinforce what you already think. This tendency is at the foundation of those who philosophically follow Colleen Lynn and her fraudulent “public safety” website, a website that pays no attention to actual ways of improving public safety. Like I mentioned earlier, it amounts to not much more than a hub for a delusional hate group whose life work is based around scapegoating entire groups of undefinable dogs. You can see it for yourself by simply observing how many of these individuals conduct themselves online. For example, try commenting out of tune on one of their Facebook pages and you will be instantly banned for not striking the expected tone.

I’d advise the anti-dog crowd to step out of the darkness of anonymity and engage someone every once and awhile who’s not a shill for their entrenched beliefs. If they’re so confident in their interpretations then that should be an expected next step, right? I’d happily invite any of them onto the Bull Horn podcast, even all 3 of them at the same time. This invitation will continue to stand for whenever they’d want to accept it. But moving on…

On Monday Barbara Kay said, which was then echoed by Colleen Lynn, that “if you can only love a Pit Bull, you don’t really love dogs.” Woosah! First off, that standalone statement is a complete misrepresentation of most people’s feelings. How many people do you know that love only Pit Bulls? What? For Heaven’s sake, “Pit Bulls,” as most people speak of them, are mostly dogs who’ve been mixed amongst many differing breeds. That alone negates the stupidity of such a statement. But breed identification aside, I literally do not know of a single person that has shown or stated Kay’s sentiment to be even remotely accurate. Let me repeat, I know not 1 person who would fit that characterization!

See, this is the backwardness of their arguments and the emptiness of their attempts at framing rhetoric. Pit Bull-owning people are just like any other dog owner, just as Pit Bulls and mixes are just dogs. Every single day this is proven in millions of instances, none of which garner any media attention. Pit Bull owners do not love only Pit Bulls. They do not dislike other dogs. Reality would show the opposite to be true, and almost entirely across the board. Of course, there will always be negative outliers to any positive observation, as a certain percentage of people will always exist from all walks of life. But with that, bad individuals, in any realm, do not serve to spoil the entire group of millions of categorized individuals. Further, Pit Bull owners are not fragmented persons from the rest of society. Those claims are total lies and misrepresentations meant to plant seeds of hostility and divide dog owners against themselves. Such inaccuracies are obviously what dog-haters like Colleen Lynn want uninvolved people to think, but these notions will routinely fall flat upon any type of examination.

Instead, it’s the cult of DogsBite.org that’s built upon the premise of the “only.” They routinely only focus on begrudging the Pit Bull, filling their obsessive existences with vilifying the self-defined “only” factions of both the dog and people populations. It’s all prejudicially argumentative at its core, and that’s clear as day. These attempts being always based in trying to project upon society that Pit Bulls are not dogs and that Pit Bull owners do not care about any other dog or person. Both concepts are extremely false and 100% unproven at any level. Yet they will go back to these claims time and time again because using a broad brush to incite irrational fear is literally the only leg that they have to stand on.

In Barbara Kay’s latest article, referenced above, I counted a whopping 22 separate instances where she made a Pit Bull-specific claim that in actuality goes unsubstantiated. This is appalling and embarrassing and pathetic. But still not surprising, coming from a woman who in 2012 wrote that Pit Bull owners were purposely “fetishizing” dogs “bred for blood sport and savaging slaves.”

On the same day that Kay put out her latest anti-Pit Bull rant, Merritt Clifton put out a ludicrous piece entitled “Hitler’s Pit Bull.” Yes, you read that right.

This insane diatribe basically implies that since (more appropriately if) Hitler allegedly had a dog that Clifton calls a Pit Bull, then that must prove that Pit Bulls are universally evil… Um, okay guy! That’s the stupidest fucking thing that I’ve ever heard in my entire life. Impressively done.

Clifton goes on to claim that Hitler had this dog from 1915-1917, which, just for the record, was years before he even entered into politics and 22 years prior to the start of World War II. Comically there was no effort made by Clifton to demonize German Shepherds, who Hitler consistently owned throughout his reign of Nazi terror. And that’s not to say that his owning of German Shepherds was a bad thing, as it doesn’t reflect a single thing about any individual dog being bad, or further, about an entire breed or type of dogs being bad. I’m simply using his vague asshatery against him.

In an incredible dose of irony Clifton then ends his poop fest with this…

Though Hitler’s maniacal hatred, paranoia and obsession were already becoming self-evident, the loss of his dog and subsequent gassing may have contributed to his desire to scapegoat others.

The scapegoating Merritt Clifton can diagnose a scapegoating Adolf Hitler? Too rich.

In closing, Clifton’s writing shows how incredibly lame his attempts at demonization are. He spends most of his article trying to discredit Sergeant Stubby, timelining the dog’s existence as if he was there, and then arguing over which breed he was or wasn’t. He then states that one of history’s most wretched human beings had many dogs, but only opts to focus on 1 of them. Again, he diagnoses the dog’s breed through a picture and then states emphatically that this time it is a Pit Bull, imagine that! He then uses his claim as proof that a certain type of dog is evil. Really, man? Good grief. Speaking again of irony, these repugnant people are the same folks that want to do to Pit Bulls what the Nazis did to the Jews. Just saying.

The Amanda Foundation gives an incredible spay and neuter presentation at the Los Angeles Animal Services Commission meeting on 4/22/2014. It is truly free. No zip codes, no vouchers, no hoops to jump.

I call bullshit on this recently sprung up website PitBullsArea.com. It’s an incredibly poor, and dare I say dumb, website peppered with misinformation and vague implications that just sound basic and stupid. Yet it’s promoted as being Pit Bull supporting in nature. I can’t tell if whomever created it is just severely uninformed and simplistic, or if it’s a sham website created with the sole intention of having its information exploited by Pit Bull hating psychopaths. Whoever writes for the website constantly speaks in generalities, and they make some pretty outlandish claims that are just fantastically false in certain instances. It also has almost 30,000 “likes” on Facebook, but curiously the largest thread since its November 2013 inception has garnered a whopping 4 comments. Mysterious enough. It’s seems like a website not even run by an actual human being, maybe instead by a bot or a computer software generation system or something similar to that. Here’s some of their silly headlines…

“4 ways to prevent Pit Bull attacks”
“6 tips on how to prevent Pit Bull attacks”
“6 ways to properly raise a blue Pit Bull puppy”
“Understanding Pit Bull body language”
“5 facts you should consider before adopting blue nose Pit Bull puppies”
“Tips on how to care for your red nose Pit Bull puppies”
“8 best tips you can use for training your blue nose Pit Bull”
“7 causes of Pit Bull barking”

Um, what? Almost every single one of their posted story headlines (I just chose the dumbest) gives the impression from the start that “Pit Bulls” differ from other dogs. I don’t know if it was a trendy marketing decision or just foolishness that’s driving that angle, but it sure is incredibly unfair and misleading in numerous ways. Attempting to break down breed-specific body language and barking? WTF. Preposterous nonsense. Further, whenever they’re saying the whole blue and red nose stuff it’s usually written in a way to say that they will all be 1 way and based on their coloring. Preposterous nonsense, again. For example, one post says that all blue nose puppies will grow up to be “animal aggressive.” Just complete and utter rubbish. Last, the numerous failures of breed identification and the absolute fact of each dog of any breed being an individual sadly don’t seem to be topics that are given much mention on their website. And with that, it’s framework then drives home the opposite idea, even if it’s an unintended result, which is surely possible. I just know that this is bad advocacy.

In a country of over 300 million people, and mixed amongst 70 or 80 million dogs, there is absolutely no perfect universal fail-safe that will guarantee that everything that you come to experience in your vast lifetime will be okay 100% of the time. Although 99.9999999999% of the time it absolutely is, and day after day to boot, there’s still always that remote chance that exists for an accident or incident to happen. This is life. And this goes for anything in life, the few things related to dogs and the millions of other things that have nothing to do with them at all. With that, there’s usually things that you could also do that will further serve to minimize the likelihood of many tragic things from happening, and especially tragic things involving dogs. Even still, nothing in life is perfect. But life is about living, and “living” is to not live in an irrational and exaggerated state of fear.

I open with that paragraph because in the United States dogs kill about 30 or so people a year. The actual evidence (those remaining when you subtract 30 from 70,000,000 or 80,000,000 dogs) then proves beyond any shadow of a doubt their incredible deference to humans. This is indisputable no matter if it goes repeatedly unacknowledged by certain people who would still find it “practical” or “necessary” to ban or phase out entire groups of dogs based solely on the way that they physically appear. Expect no science, no consistency, and very few of the justifications of doing such things to ever be backed up with any actual proof. They’ll say it’s for public safety. I say it’s for giving the illusion of dealing with a glorified bogeyman of their own creation.

For the sake of conceptual comparison this brings me to a very sobering statistic stating that roughly 22 U.S. military veterans are committing suicide every day. EVERY DAY.

While pondering that statement also note that these numbers are apparently only taken from 21 states, which amounts to about 40% of the U.S. population. Amongst those opting not to report any data were California and Texas, the 2 biggest of the contiguous 48. More than 34,000 suicides from these 21 states were also “discarded” from the study because the death records failed to indicate whether that individual was a veteran or not. So that amounts to more than 23% of the recorded suicides from this 40% of the U.S. population that were not counted, meaning that only 77% of that 40% was looked at instead of the full 100%. Also, how exactly are homeless veterans being counted if they potentially have no one to vouch for their whereabouts? And how many suicides just go suppressed due to the family wanting to rewrite a public script as to avoid any stigma associated with such an act? All of these points are mentioned to imply that this 22/day figure is probably low.

Do the anti-dog folks happen to care about why this is happening to our military veterans? Just curious. Would they then care about what things may lead to this circumstance playing out? Or, like with Pit Bulls, is there just a simplistic and formulaic copout concept that can be used to label these individuals in a way that assassinates their character after they’re no longer around? Because that’s most definitely the mentality used by hatemongers wanting to negatively lump all of these dogs together… So would these veterans be vaguely labeled as “weak” or “unfit” by this same crowd that gleefully vilifies all Pit Bulls on the back of any and every (mostly avoidable) tragedy? I want to know, and if not then I want to know why not?! Because if you’re lazy with your thoughts in 1 realm then why isn’t that a consistent reaction to all others? And to the contrary, if you’re capable of critical thinking with regards to what leads to military suicides then why doesn’t critical thinking apply with regards to what leads to dogs fatally attacking people?

If you are reading this and this sounds like you and you’d define yourself as being in any way introspective then you should currently be at a crossroads. Instead, if you have no problem with the confliction of the point then it just serves to show your massive bias against Pit Bulls.

In broaching this difficult topic as to why this is happening to so many of our veterans, well, I’d offer up numerous thoughts that really don’t get much mainstream media attention…

First and foremost would be the devastating realities that some are very likely exposed to, and being haunted by those things that they either saw or quite possibly took part in. The concept of war is the oxymoronic opposite of peace. Our foreign policy of interventionism and desired expansion is literally based in ever-altering forms of aggression. This, depending on the cast of characters involved and their individual mental makeups, has to assist in harvesting a brutal and disconnected violence that may be seen in some of them. How that then manifests itself into the daily lives of differing individuals would obviously vary across the board, but it’s clearly ruined some. At some point a partaker in a horrific act will have to deal with their conscience, right?

Also, mix in selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors like Zoloft, Luvox and Paxil. Look at a sleeping pill like Ambien. All of these things are drugs known for treating anxiety, stress, depression, insomnia, and many other mental disorders, and they are also all known to cause psychotic breaks. The inserts directly say that these things increase the risk of suicidal behavior as well as an overall level of agitation and hostility. How many members of our military, past and present, are on them?

Lastly, how many of these men and women are sent on multiple tours of duty? How many multiples? How many are essentially used up and then, for lack of a better term, discarded when they finally (if ever) return home? Have their benefits been limited? Are they getting the proper medical treatment that their body or mind may require? Do they have a genuine support system? Are they privy to an environment that’s allowing them to transition back into domestic society? Have they been sexually assaulted or alienated inside of whatever program, and then silenced or made to feel as though they are helpless in trying to pursue justice?

I know that this is a lot, but for this topic of military suicide it is all relevant. You cannot possibly be saddened by that statistic, want to help lower it, and then proceed to completely ignore all of these points that I just mentioned. I’m sure that there are many more. Yet, when going back to the dog-related human fatality topic this is the type of stuff that is almost always done! Circumstances and problematic happenings leading up to whatever event, that’s then making whatever headline, customarily go ignored. So how do you genuinely attempt to address an issue, be empathetic towards and issue, be part of the crafting of any solution on an issue, if you are at the same time disingenuously covering your eyes and ears to the means that may lead another to that end? The confidence in such a process is non-existent.

To San Bernardino City shelter and ABC 7 news: Stop with the collective blaming of an unseen mass of people just because 1 or 2 jackass individuals may have decided to send “death threats” to a specific shelter staff. Media needs to move away from these types of dumbed down tactics. Quit using people’s programming for soundbytes against them in order to shift narratives of a story. The cowardly behavior from whomever sent the threat does not excuse anything another person did or didn’t do. Whomever sent a death threat does not speak for the next person, they speak for themselves.

To so-called “animal advocates”: If you send another human being a death threat, or wish death upon another person, you are nothing but an advocate for death. You are doing nothing positive for animals. Go away.