White House Opposes Banning Dogs Based on Cosmetic Features, Still Likes Doing So for Guns

Given the Obama administration’s desire to ban the sale of “assault weapons” such as the AR-15, I was amused to see a recent posting on the White House website in response to a petition to “ban and outlaw Breed Specific Legislation” that would outlaw dogs based on their breed or physical characteristics. 

If you take the White House response and simply replace “dogs” and “breeds” with “guns,” and make other appropriate changes, such as putting in the results from a recent report on guns from the Centers for Disease Control to replace the CDC study on dog bites cited in the original White House posting, you end up with a good argument for why the administration’s firearms policies are wrong [changes in brackets]:

Official The White House Response to Ban and outlaw [Gun] Specific Legislation (GSL) in the United States of America on a Federal level!

[Gun]-Specific Legislation Is a Bad Idea

Thanks for your petition.

We don’t support [gun]-specific legislation — research shows that bans on certain types of [guns] are largely ineffective and often a waste of public resources.

[In 2013, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention looked at data about gun violence and found that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals and that there is a lower injury rate among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies.]

The CDC also noted that the types of people who look to exploit [guns] aren’t deterred by [gun] regulations — when their communities establish a ban, these people just seek out new, unregulated [guns]. And the simple fact is that [guns] of any breed can become dangerous when they’re intentionally or unintentionally [misused].

For all those reasons, the CDC officially recommends against [gun]-specific legislation — which they call inappropriate.

As an alternative to [gun]-specific policies, the CDC recommends a community-based approach to prevent [gun crime]. And ultimately, we think that’s a much more promising way to build stronger communities of [gun] owners.