Castle Rock this week will wade into an issue that has vexed metro Denver for decades — should the town lift its ban on pit bulls, a prohibition it has had in place for more than a quarter century?

The town has scheduled an open house for 6 p.m. Wednesday, when residents can learn details about Castle Rock’s breed-specific ban and what might replace it, along with other animal-related topics such as the potential to allow backyard chickens and bees.

But it’s the ban on pit bulls that is attracting the most attention, with a majority of respondents to a recent town survey saying the time has come to do away with it. The town is putting on the table a proposal that lifts the ban and instead uses an enforcement system that focuses on a specific animal’s behavior rather than its breed.

The town council will make a final decision on the matter in the coming weeks.

“Our team is making the recommendation that we move to a … system that will focus on addressing the behavior, instead of the breed…,” the town attorney wrote to the council in a memo late last year. “Because it is not breed-specific, it will permit a more flexible application which will better ensure that a number of factors are taken into consideration, such as the animal’s history, the circumstances of any incident, and the behavior — instead of how the animal looks.”

Town officials say a breed-specific ban is difficult to enforce because it’s hard to tell which dogs are truly pit bulls — Castle Rock defines the breed as an American pit bull terrier, American Staffordshire terrier or Staffordshire bull terrier — and DNA tests to make that determination are expensive and can take several weeks to yield results.

Castle Rock imposed its pit bull ban in 1992, three years after Denver took the lead on the issue following a couple of brutal attacks by pit bulls in the city — one killed a 3-year-old child in 1986 and another severely injured a man in the alley behind his home in 1989.

It didn’t take long for other metro-area cities and towns — such as Aurora, Lone Tree, Louisville, Commerce City — to follow suit and banish the breed as well.

But not everyone agrees that pit bulls are inherently aggressive or nasty dogs. They say most of the blame for dangerous behavior lies with the animal’s owner and the way he or she treats and trains the dog. Several prominent animal welfare groups, like the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the Dumb Friends League, have called breed-specific bans bad policy.

“When you have a breed-specific law, you’re pointing everything at the dog — you’re not holding the owner accountable for protecting the community,” said Duane Adams, vice president of operations for the Dumb Friends League.

Adams contends that many dog breeds that don’t fall into the pit bull family still cause thousands of biting injuries to people every year. So why, he asks, should the pit bull be singled out?

Jen Dudley, who has lived in Castle Rock for five years, recently started the advocacy group End Castle Rock BSL (breed-specific legislation) in an effort to do away with the ban. She said there are far better ways to reduce the number of dog bites in a community — public education and strict enforcement of licensing and leash laws, for starters — than banning an entire breed.

“Taxpayer money being spent on removing dogs and prosecuting owners of said dogs — just because they look a certain way, but have shown zero aggressive behavior and have zero history of incidents — is an absolute waste,” she said.

But Colleen Lynn, founder of DogsBite.org and the victim of a pit bull attack, said it’s not a question of whether other breeds bite too. It’s a matter of how much more severe a pit bull’s bite is, she said.

She cited a number of medical studies from hospitals across the country that show pit bulls account for a disproportionate percentage of incidents that result in severe injury, often requiring surgery, for its victims. Lynn said “it’s just not honest” to discount the pit bull’s genetic makeup in assessing its potential danger to the public.

“The hold, the shake, the unwillingness to stop an attack — that doesn’t need to be taught to them,” she said. “Fighting dogs will fight. It’s reasonable for local governments to place restrictions on a class of dogs that statistically cause more harm to humans, especially children, when they attack.”

Traumatic stories of pit bull attacks, like the one in Aurora in 2005 that nearly killed a 10-year-old boy, can leave a lasting impression. That incident helped spur the city to pass its own pit bull ban the following year and eight years later, in 2014, voters in Aurora overwhelmingly decided to keep the ban in place.

As for Denver, the city has fought to keep its ban alive in the face of legal challenges, not the least of which was a bill passed by state lawmakers in 2004 outlawing breed-specific bans — a move being copied in other states. The city cited its home rule power as justification for maintaining its prohibition, and the courts agreed.

In 2016, a pro-pit bull group started an effort, later abandoned, to overturn Denver’s ban. With significant turnover on the City Council in recent elections, the possibility of change has grown. A handful of council members have discussed a potential repeal in recent months — but so far, no firm proposal has materialized.