A 2-year-old girl getting strangled by her parents' escaped Burmese python should finally convince Florida to ban the sale of dangerous reptiles.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has put restrictions in place to prevent this kind of tragedy, but none of them managed to prevent Jaren Ashley Hare and Charles Jason Darnell of Sumter County from mismanaging their pet.
As the law currently stands, Floridians can own a "reptile of concern," which includes pythons, anacondas and monitor lizards, as long as they pay a $100 fee per year, implant it with a microchip and meet "strict caging requirements." According to an article in The Gainesville Sun, Hare and Darnell discovered the snake had escaped from its glass cage earlier in the day, hours before the child was asphyxiated. Vaguely telling someone to store his or her snake in a "reliable" cage is not a "reliable" way to prevent irresponsible people from owning dangerous animals.
We are not against infringing on personal liberties in any way, but this is not analogous to something like the right to bear arms. Guns, like snakes, can be owned by both responsible and irresponsible people. But, unlike guns, snakes can act and move independently of their owners and kill people, like infants, who don't even have the manual dexterity to pull a trigger. Plus, the "right to hang out with snakes and monitor lizards" isn't in the Bill of Rights.
Reptiles such as Burmese pythons already pose a threat to Florida's environment as an invasive species. Now that a human fatality has occurred, hopefully the Florida Legislature will realize that the current law should be replaced by an outright ban on "reptiles of concern."
