Hacker News Reader

Comment by nradov | Hacker News Reader

Hardly anyone in NYC would comply with such a law. They would just ignore it. The city could perhaps require DNA testing by animal shelters and legitimate breeders within it's borders. But many dogs come from elsewhere, or from backyard breeders who don't care about laws.

View on HN

Dogs in NYC are already required to wear tags with their rabies vaccination statuses and IDs. That also isn't really checked, but it absolutely could be by simply stopping people walking their dogs and requesting to see their ID tag.

Don't shoot the messenger, but this is one of a number of quality-of-life improvements which is a non-starter because of the doctrine of disparate racial impact. The argument would be that poverty, undocumented status, etc, means it's harder for some ethnicities to comply with that sort of regulation, so the burden of police interaction would disproportionately fall on them. Probably not wrong in this case, getting a dog registered with all his shots is fairly expensive. My take is that a law worth having is a law worth enforcing, but unless that idea comes back into fashion, things like your suggestion won't happen.

Yet obviously there are many laws that are enforced and do have disparate racial impacts... So this is just an airing of grievances.

Those laws aren't dog ownership requirements in New York City, though. Which is the topic I was replying to. It wasn't a statement about all laws everywhere.

They literally are: you are required to vaccinate and register your dog in NYC and your dog is required to wear proof of this vaccination at all times in public.

Ah, I didn't realize you were the person I was replying to, and assumed that the "airing of grievances" bit was directed at me. My reference to "those laws" was to the ones you said have disparate racial impact and are enforced. I still think that NYC is unlikely to start robustly enforcing the ones you are talking about.

"Your papers, please."

Come on, you can't be serious. Police and code enforcement officers aren't going to stop random dog walkers on the street to demand DNA test results. Real Americans don't tolerate that kind of government overreach, and the authorities already didn't even have time to investigate actual crimes.

"Demand DNA test results" == "check that they have a specific tag on their collar"

I didn't say they are going to, and you didn't say they wouldn't. You said they couldn't (because people "would just ignore it") and I said they absolutely could. Which is true.

Re "Real Americans", get a grip.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com