I didn’t read the article the commenter linked, just OPs link, and it’s the same thing that happens with many different “let’s ban this arguments.” People get swept up and hyped on common sentiment fear, and find any “article” that supports their viewpoint, because their opinion is now a popular opinion, therefore they’re right.

I do think that there are some breeds where caution is needed, but much of that ties back into people having certain breeds that aren’t right for them. Pits are high energy dogs that require a lot of exercise, and when they don’t get that exercise, they do dumb shit. Similarly, a 125 pound person probably shouldn’t be walking a 100 pound dog of any breed, as an owner needs to be able to control their animal if something happens.

I have a Staffador (Staffordshire mixed with chocolate lab). She is extremely high energy, can jump a good 4’ in the air, and loves to play bite/wrestle. It’s been a long road getting her jumping and aggressive behavior under control, but you’re more likely to get properly bit by our plotthound with PTSD.

“mixed breeds” just means any dog that isn’t purebred, which is the vast majority of dogs, so it doesn’t say much that they account for a lot of attacks

Removed by mod

And when you talk about banning dog breeds, yes you are talking about rounding them up in euthanizing them. Period.

I’m absolutely not. I’m advocating restrictions on breeders, not owners. No one should have their dog taken away, and pit bulls in shelters should still be adoptable in my view. I just don’t believe we should be deliberately breeding more dogs with known issues, whether it’s issues with their own health (like pugs) or issues with aggression.

Please don’t presume to tell me what I’m advocating.

So if a dog is 10% pit bull, 20% German shepherd, 10% beagle 15% husky, 20% lab, 5% golden and 10% Belgian Malinois it counts towards “pit bulls” but no other breed? Got it. It’s almost like another form of historical discrimination by race said any percentage counts as belonging to the undesired race that is being targeted…

“Of unidentifiable dogs that have average dog characteristics we attributed generic criteria that meet any number of breeds but also fit the specific ones we wanted to target with our predetermined conclusion prior to executing this study. We were able to validate our desired outcome with this specific targeting.” #Science!

And there it is people Good old American racism.

I’m certain you’ve also followed the Russian experiment where they managed to take wild foxes and domesticate them in under 50 generations and now you can adopt one as a pet. So what you’re telling me is that a dog that has been with humanity for over 10,000 years and then went through a period of roughly 300 years of pit fighting is irrepidly damaged but the fox that went through 15,000 years of being a fox It’s just magically now perfect pet in under 100 years. And you’re telling me that it’s genetics and not nurturing and raising the animal that has an impact okay…

Cows kill more people than dogs. That does not mean that cows are more aggressive than dogs.

Plenty of dogs referred to as ‘pitbulls’ are not particularly aggressive at all. Often they’re less aggressive than dogs of other breeds. All dogs were bred to be hunting dogs. They all have a prey drive. They can all hunt small animals. Some of the most aggressive dogs, are also the smallest, but a pekingese is less likely to cause serious damage. Being nipped by a pekingese is unlikely to merit a police report. (I say unlikely advisedly. Even small dogs can be dangerous.)

The whole ‘pitbulls are aggressive’ line is a dangerous misconception. Here’s why:

Predictably, someone encounters a pitbull type. They’ve heard all about ‘pitbulls’ being aggressive. But this dog is not even slightly agressive. It is a nice friendly dog. It is especially careful with the children. They go on the internet, and see a video of a child sleeping on a pitbull. The pitbull is incredibly careful with the child.

“People are clearly exagerating how agressive pitbulls are!” “My pitbull is a sweetheart!” “Did you know pitbulls were known as nanny dogs! I read it on the internet.”

But large powerful dogs aren’t dangerous because they’re aggressive. They’re dangerous because they’re large powerful dogs.

The owner leaves a child alone with a large powerful dog. The dog is entirely unagressive. But then firework goes off, the dog panics, the child is in the way. The child tugs the dogs tail, the dog gives what would be a corrective bite for a dog but is far more serious for a child. The dog grabs onto the child’s hand, then doesn’t let go because he thinks it’s a game.

Obviously, it goes without saying that you can train a pitbull type to be aggressive, just like you can train any dog to be aggressive. But gangmembers don’t typically train pekingese dogs to be aggressive just like the police don’t typically use a chihuahua to catch criminals. They want a dog that is dangerous because it is powerful and intimidating. They can train it to be aggressive and bite people if necessary.

As a life long dog owner, who actually knows a bit about them, here’s how you solve the dangerous dog issue:

• mandatory registration and chip
• mandatory insurance
• mandatory training at a reputable school (which will also inevitably train the human owner out of the ‘he wouldn’t hurt a fly’ nonsense or signal authorities if they notice the owner getting off on his dog being scary/dangerous)

Banning pitbull types? A short term fix which will result in another breed becoming the next aggressive arsehole fashion accessory.

Dogs are specifically bred for certain physical and behavioral traits.

Which, of course, is completely natural and has nothing to do with their owners.

I’m not going to say that Pit Bulls aren’t more dangerous than many other breeds… they are. Not just because of breeding, but also because of training and ownership.

But any dog is more dangerous than no dog. Why not just ban dogs altogether? Might as well ban cars and kitchen knives, too, those are pretty dangerous. Hell, I’ve stabbed myself with pencils, too. Better get rid of those as well.

Its not a problem that flat bans will solve. Ban pit bulls and they’ll just start breeding other violent dogs instead. Meanwhile all the mutts with a little bit of pit in them get thrown in an incinerator because people have no concept of nuance or depth. I’m sure you’re more than happy living with that.

Removed by mod

You literally did not read the article you posted

First off, you’d need to also factor in the percentage of large dogs, as no matter how vicious a toy breed or even medium sized dog is, it isn’t going to have a high fatal bite count. So out of the 36% of dog households that have a large dog, pitt ownership might be more than 6% of the total.

Then again, we need to look at other factors as well.

Maybe 70% of rescue dogs are pitts and 100% of fatal bites were from rescues? (Or vice versa, that 100% of fatal bites were from rescues and 70% of the rescues that went on to bite were pitts, which is a more subtle but still very different picture of events which might reflect fairly narrow causal environmental factors like prior fight training.)

Without the additional layers of data, the best we can do is draw potentially misleading conclusions around causative factors when we barely have correlative ones.

And the ways in which this could be dangerous in terms of social policy is if actions are taken around the mythos of it being a breed specific trait, it not being that, and then unexpected outcomes occurring, such as a popularity shift towards an even more dangerous breed as pitt ownership declines or ignoring or even exacerbating underlying causal relationships to environmental factors.

We’ve seen how bad data science applied to human crime rates can lead to supremely (supremacist?) misleading claims around the contributing factors with an over representation of demographic data that’s simply correlative to underlying causative environmental factors.

So if we both know full well that saying “XYZ demographic is 2-3x more likely to commit violent crimes so we should get rid of XYZ demographic from the population” is an outrageously bad faith argument predicated on poor data analysis, I’m curious what you think is materially different about the data evaluation aspects that you support the analogous claim here?

Not the person to whom you replied, but there are many stories behind that paragraph. The problem is that a dog bred to be strong is likely to be strong enough to ignore a leash when it wants to. A few minutes on your search engine of choice can give you headlines of pits and other powerful breeds getting away from their handlers even when leashed.

The resulting advocacy is that criminal culpability should still lie even in the absence of negligence on the part of the owner. In many states, tort liability will lie on a strict liability basis (i.e., the owner is liable for damages incurred by the victim of an animal attack even if the animal exhibited no prior dangerous behavior)–in other states, the owner must be aware of the danger of the animal, for instance from prior bites, before liability will attach. That’s generally not true in criminal cases, however, where theories usually require a finding of negligence due to the higher burden of proof and the higher stakes (i.e., incarceration).

The best analogy I can think of would be statutory rape–you can be guilty and incarcerated even if you consented, the victim consented, and you genuinely had no idea that the victim was below the statutory age. The position would be that we should adopt the same for animal attacks: You can (and should, advocates would argue) be incarcerated even if your animal injured someone through no fault of your own and you had no previous reason to believe the animal would become dangerous.

Reading about some of the attacks in which the owner exercised their best efforts to control the animal and failed, I can see the argument: Merely owning the animal at all is accepting responsibility for its actions, full stop. Personally, I think current negligence theory is basically sufficient for this (i.e., if the dog can get away from you, you have a duty to know that and prevent it), but the benefit of this kind of strict liability legislation would be that all the bickering in these threads about which breed is good, which breed is bad, and who knows and doesn’t know dogs would evaporate. Put your money where your mouth is. The dog you can count on never to kill someone is the dog that can’t.

Love, the owner of a small yappy type dog who is harmless because he’s tiny and trivially easy to overpower.

Asshole cat is biting me right now. We went on vacation for a few days, left him with a friend, and then had him stay alone for about 36 hours (with his automatic feeder and fancy waterer).

He’s just the most social cat I’ve ever had.

My friend met a sweet pitbull, and then it bit her on the neck. They aren’t just strong, they are unpredictable as hell.

I’m not breeding them their dogs they fuck.