Actually, training a dog is good rehabilitation for felons, and ought to be done in prisons. Give each inmate a dog and Koehler training classes. You'd get a prison of the best behaved dogs you've ever seen, and probably inmates as well.

Training using the right methods, of course - not the psychobabble methods of the modern age, but the drill-sergeant methods of a Koehler.

Dogs collectively, the millions and millions that exist and are mostly under provocation most of the time in the modern household, kill all of 12 people a year, which puts the risk from dogs roughly in the hit-by-asteroid category of worry.

Bites are more frequent, and are usually the way of saying don't poke your finger in my eye, valuable training for young boys. Ohio law says any dog being tormented shall not be deemed vicious, a law written in an older age probably, when the way things work was still intuited.

The politics of dog hysteria, an eye-opener, is wonderfully laid out in Vicki Hearne's _Bandit_.

German Shepherds are OKAY today owing to Rin-Tin-Tin movies ; Pete the Pup was too long ago to have saved the Pit Bull from hysteria, alas. Thanks to the Humane Society of the United States for the hysteria.

Koehler thought that every dog should be trained to good citizenship (a 50s idea), big dogs, old dogs, 3-legged dogs, every dog, and more or less proved it could be done. He devised methods to deal with hardened biters, even, and apparently never lost a dog that fell into his care. Talk about methods that work.

Felons buy scary aggressive dogs precisely because they are forbidden to have weapons, at least that is the theory behind this. It makes sense. I have no problem with it. I'm not partial to people sporting attack type dogs as pets to begin with.

Mikem,

And by "attack type dogs" you would include Golden Retrievers, Labs, Poodles, Beagles, and any other dog that's unfortunate enough to grow to weigh more than 20 pounds?

Any dog can be viscous, and smaller dogs are usually more prone to bite (because they're more easily threatened).

Besides, how long before felons aren't allowed to own small dogs because they can be easily concealed and carried around as a weapon?

No, I didn't mean poodles. Or golden retrievers. Don't pretend that you don't know what I mean.
I realize that it is difficult to construct the law to do what it is suppossed to do.
Or do you have a problem with convicted felons not being allowed to 'carry' attack dogs, once they're defined to your satisfaction?
I thought we gun people were tough on criminals.

mikem, like guns, criminals won't obey the law. And one man's GSD that is trained to attack is another man's GSD who is scared of his own shadow.

Not to mention that everything is a felony now. Pretty soon HOV violations will strip you of your rights.

I look at it more pragmatically than that. If a guy is guilty of armed robbery, he should have the book thrown at him. If he's guilty of filling in a "natural wetlands" pothole in his backyard, that's altogether different.

CALIFORNIA = Everything will eventually be banned.

The term convicted felon is used way to loose. It suggests that once a person commits a crime he should be treated as if he is likely to for the rest of his life. If this is so. What is the point of all of the counseling and court ordered rehab. The fact of the matter is that recidivism is zero or very near zero once a person has passed the 5 year markof being crime free. Yet forever one will be treated just like a person that is living a criminal life. This has gone way to far.