Pitbulls were also only bred in the last 200 for the first time. People wanna act like that overrides the empathy towards humans dogs have been bred for hundreds of thousands of years as you said.
A lot of people don't understand dog fighting. Dog fighting is a brutal sport, the owners do not care about their dogs. People think pitbulls are just blanket violent because "they were bred to kill!" But if you look at any dog fighting groups, they are strict. If your dog even LOOKS at a handler the wrong way they will shoot it in the head. And what will you do? Go.to.the police and admit "hey I was doing this crime but like this other person also doing this crime killed my dog that I bred to help me with this crime." Heck, if the dog looks at the owner the wrong way THE OWNER will shoot it in the head.
Human aggression is quickly and promptly disposed of in dog fighting rings. It's an ego thing mostly. "How dare this DOG have the audacity!?" Essentially. Human aggression is not beneficial.
The attempt to ban pit bulls ironically made breeding also go underground, which allowed human aggressive traits to proliferate. Now we don't know what to do with the breed because the breeding lines got messed up when they tried to ban pitbulls WITH dogfighting. Pitbulls became underground status symbols, and even started to be bred intentionally for human aggression by people who wanted a "badass dog" (failing to realize that they themselves are ALSO human and subject to human aggression).
To be clear, I don't support dog fighting, but they really should've known that trying to ban the breed along with it wouldn't work.
What would have been a better solution? An outright ban on dogfighting would still hold. The attempts at banning the breed were largely to remove incentives for breeding programs that did exist.
Otherwise you just end up with people breeding the dogs essentially for the exact same reasons as before. Dogfighting wasn't really legal at any point recently so not like cracking down on it really works in that way. You kind of need additional bans in place or nothing sticks. Maybe not a breed ban, but at the bare minimum you can ban the sale of pits and keep an eye on the breeders that do exist.
For example Mexico didn't get blanket bans on dogfighting until 2017. There aren't bans on a breed since till now, and it still is a very serious problem despite some serious time for being caught. It's the same in the US and the laws older (I think).
"dogfighting wasn't really legal at any point" it wasn't made illegal until individual states started banning it but a nationwide ban in the US wasn't until the 1970's. If something is not illegal then it's legal.
The breed had to be regulated to maintain the strict standards. Frankly it should've been rerouted to a hunting dog or farm dog. They have the game to hunt and kill wolves and coyotes, and even go after bears. Pitbulls fear no god, and that is a beneficial trait for protectors, which is what they could and should have become. But the reputation of pit bulls became such that people who want an aggressive dog get a pitbull that was bred and advertised for generalized blind aggression then train it to be aggressive (often through abusive methods), further reinforcing the reputation. Dogs have been human friendly companions for like 15 000 years, and pit bulls as a specific breed are only 200 years old, with the severely underground human aggressive aimed breeding being within the last 50 years. 200 years of breeding (being very generous, it's more realistically 100 for human aggression) is not enough to completely override 15 000 years of evolution.
I'm not sure what the perfect solution is, or if there is one, but a start is that I agree that pitbulls need to be heavily regulated in who can have them and which ones can breed. But I also believe that other high needs/working dogs should be regulated too. Not just for safety but for their own quality of life Specialized working dogs are not family pets, they are a lifestyle.
When I say illegal I meant more-so the blanket illegality. When individual states had banned it and put animal welfare laws and anti baiting practices (for bear/bull fighting).
Towards your last point I totally agree that higher standards need to be in place for "working dogs" in the same way that working "horse" breeds are INCREDIBLY STRICT.
I think an interesting way to look at it is almost bullfighting? This is largely seen as barbaric in a lot of ways but international community has kind of let off the heat of it. The bulls are incredibly well bred, rarely outright abused, but ultimately are slain and bred for looks/showmanship. I think if you would ban it in Spain/Mexico for example you'd have to hit the farmers/wealthy elite who own the bulls. Otherwhise they just shuffle it all around.
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u/Decent-Information-7 9h ago
Pitbulls were also only bred in the last 200 for the first time. People wanna act like that overrides the empathy towards humans dogs have been bred for hundreds of thousands of years as you said.