Editor's note: This story has been updated to correct the name of Dana Strunk's organization and clarify her comments to the House committee.

JEFFERSON CITY — Last year, Springfield voters overwhelmingly voted to reject the city’s pit bull ban.

If a Missouri lawmaker has his way, breed-specific rules around the state will go, too.

Rep. Ron Hicks, R-Dardenne Prairie, says breed-specific legislation discriminates against pit bulls and infringes on their owners’ basic rights.

“I own my home,” he told a House committee this week. “I own the land that my home sits on. I don't think that I should be told that I cannot own a certain type of domesticated animal.”

He added that cities should focus on enforcing existing laws on dangerous dogs instead.

“We need to start punishing the individual for the crimes that they do,” he added. “It’s no longer OK to push it off toward someone else or some breed we don’t like."

Hicks was joined by a number of backers, including advocates from Kansas City and the St. Louis area who told the committee breed-specific legislation has been a failure.

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Mandy Ryan, a dog trainer and former animal control officer who advocates for an end to breed-specific legislation, highlighted the St. Louis County city of Florissant as a perfect example.

Between 2005, when its ban went into effect, and 2015, two years before the ban was repealed, reported dog bites doubled despite a decline in the city’s population, according to records she obtained via open records requests.

Michelle Davis, a co-founder of KC Pet Project, which runs Kansas City’s no-kill animal shelter, said restrictions in neighboring municipalities have forced owners to give up their dogs, resulting in the shelter housing them instead.

“And our taxpayers are having to foot the bill for a lot of these dogs,” she said.

A lobbyist for the Humane Society of Missouri, the Missouri Veterinary Medicine Association and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals added that his clients supported the bill.

Dana Strunk of Safety Before Dangerous Dogs shook her head at the legislation, though, telling the committee pit bulls are linked to higher rates of injuries and "responsible for more than half of all fatal dog attacks."

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The latter comment mirrored statistics from oft-cited DogsBite.org, an organization that supports breed-specific legislation.

According to DogsBite.org, about 66 percent of dog bite fatalities in the U.S. from 2005 to 2017 were caused by pit bulls.

Bob Baker, executive director of the Missouri Alliance for Animal Legislation, also opposed the bill as written, asking the committee to consider allowing breed-specific spay-and-neuter requirements to remain in place.

He said reducing the number of pit bulls through spaying and neutering would likely mean there were fewer available to those who might treat them poorly.

Springfield status quo

Springfield’s 2018 referendum only overturned the pit bull regulations passed the previous year, which banned residents from getting new pit bulls and required them to register their existing pets.

Other restrictions enacted in 2006 in the wake of widely publicized biting attacks remain in effect.

Springfield owners of pit bulls or pit bull mixes must have their pets spayed or neutered, microchipped, registered and under control at all times.

The Springfield-Greene County Health Department provided data to the Springfield City Council in 2016 showing that under the restrictions, there have been fewer bites attributed to pit bulls and fewer pit bulls coming into the shelter and being euthanized.

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The statistics note a caveat: The health department’s computer system did not differentiate by breed prior to 2010, so numbers from 2005 to 2010 are estimates.

Opponents of breed-specific legislation said those kinds of requirements can still be discriminatory, though.

Davis, of the KC Pet Project, told the committee they place an undue burden on low-income residents where she lives.

And Rep. Steve Helms, R-Springfield, thinks they amount to a de facto ban.

“They create such an onerous burden that what they’ve probably done in Springfield is reduce the numbers because people can't afford to keep their dog,” he said.

Spokeswomen for the city of Springfield and the health department had no comment on the bill.

What’s next?

The committee did not take a vote on Hicks’ bill this week, but at least three members of the committee said they own or have owned pit bulls, and no one raised any opposition.

The bill has passed the House before, too, though it has repeatedly stalled in the Senate.

The legislation is House Bill 297.

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