One of my pet peeves has long been the movement to abolish pets, and ultimately, all ownership of animals.

I have blogged about this so many times that I probably sound like a broken record, but today I learned that San Francisco is seriously considering banning the sale of all pets -- except fish:

Sell a guinea pig, go to jail.

That's the law under consideration by San Francisco's Commission of Animal Control and Welfare. If the commission approves the ordinance at its meeting tonight, San Francisco could soon have what is believed to be the country's first ban on the sale of all pets except fish.

That includes dogs, cats, hamsters, mice, rats, chinchillas, guinea pigs, birds, snakes, lizards and nearly every other critter, or, as the commission calls them, companion animals.

Not that the activists would care, but the pet stores maintain that the small animals (mostly rodents) which show up at the San Francisco Animal Shelter aren't coming from them:

On Wednesday, the shelter, which is on 15th Street in the Mission District, had six hamsters, nine rabbits, nine mice, nine rats, two guinea pigs, a bowl of goldfish, two birds, a leopard gecko, a bearded dragon and a hermit crab named Charlie.

But those shelter hamsters almost certainly did not originate at a pet store, said Michael Maddox, general counsel for the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council in Washington, D.C.

Studies by UC Davis and the National Council on Pet Population Study and Policy have shown that only a small fraction of shelter animals were purchased at pet stores, he said. People who buy animals at pet stores are just as committed, emotionally and financially, to caring for their pets as people who procure pets elsewhere, he said.

"This is an anti-pet proposal from people who oppose the keeping of pets," he said. "If their goal is to ban the ownership of pets entirely, then this is a good first step."

It would be a mistake to dismiss this a wacko, fringey, San Francisco idea. The Humane Society of the United States makes no bones about its desire to abolish the sales of animals in pet stores

The HSUS opposes the sale of dogs, cats, and other animals through pet stores and other commercial operations.

The best way to stop this sort of nonsense would be for people to stop donating money to the so-called "charities" like PETA and the HSUS. And they might also ask why cash-strapped cities have these busybody so-called "Animal Welfare commissions" in the first place. From my experience in Berkeley, I know that the only people who are ever get appointed to sit on them are animal rights activists. So what it means is that if you live in a city which has a commission like that, your tax dollars are going to activists who dedicate themselves to telling people what to do.

And if they take down the pet stores, the next target will be the pets themselves. Calls for bans on so-called "exotic animals" (which would include small reptiles) are being issued in mainstream publications like the Readers Digest.

"Wild and potentially dangerous animals should not be kept as pets where they can do grave harm to innocent victims," says Connecticut attorney general Richard Blumenthal, who has been fighting to ban all Exotic Pets in his State. "If they are wild, they belong in Nature, not in people's homes, where their natural instincts and great strength can be extraordinarily hazardous."

Don't buy animals meant to live in the wild

* Check with the Humane Society (humanesociety.org) to see if your State restricts ownership of Exotic Pets. Urge your legislators to follow the 29 States that have taken action.

These people don't intend to stop in San Francisco.