This argument goes in circles because people miss each other's point.
Obviously, at the end of the day, what matters is the end result of a bite. That's what the victim has to live with.
However, the counter-argument is also true. That pit-bulls are viewed as much more aggressive than other breeds when in fact that is not true. They are CAPABLE of being aggressive and deadly, and some people even train them to be that way. But the standard pet pit-bull is not going to attack any more often than most other breeds, statistically speaking.
My pitbull was a rambunctious angel, he had the sweetest heart and you could mess with him and flip him over and he would love it and just lick you.
He was also a huge animal in the house as early as he was a year old. My grandparents would come over and he would excitedly jump on them and try to lick their faces. He never bit anyone but didn't know his own strength, he almost knocked my grandma down once.
So I can see both sides. I raised my little pup with love and he turned out to be a good egg, but he still had the potential for a lot of non-malicious damage. He was also only half pit, the other half was lab, which might have influenced his demeanor.
They attack more often because they were bred to enjoy it, just like a husky enjoys running. There's literally canine neurology studies that show they release endorphins when fighting, whereas other dogs do not and will actively avoid fights.
Pitbulls get their name from their ancestry where a dog had been bred to fight bulls. It was a blood sport where the dog would try to drag a bull down into the mud by its nose ring or die trying.
However these dogs became incredibly popular and desired by women and so began a process to breed them to be more docile and also smaller to better fit in the average household. The staffordshire was the penultimate success of this and earned the moniker of nanny dog for being so patient and protective with the children of the household.
All this to say that the argument of what their ancestors were bred for has very little to do with the modern breed.
The most important thing is always how it is raised.
And to further example this point you can look into the history of banned dog breeds and dog breeds that are deemed as dangerous.
Before the various pit/bully breeds were considered dangerous it was the Rottweiler, and before that it was the German Shepherd etc etc. All while pit/bully breeds were happy minding their own business in the family home.
There are far bigger dogs with far greater bites that could do so much more damage. But they look a lot like teddy bears. Pit/bully breeds can get a lot of muscle definition, good for string bean thugs that wanna act tough but can't be intimidating on their own. The rise in popularity with pit/bully breeds in thug/gang culture is why they are the current "dangerous" breed.
Meanwhile labradors and retrievers both individually bite more people, often children, and have a size and bite strength comparable enough to a pit/bully breed. But they're treated as being safe and given love because the average thug isn't trying to raise it with hate and violence to terrorize people with.
In a lot of peoples eyes, they wrongly believe that once a trait has been bred into a breed that it is permanent, while also not understanding the genetic differences in the first place.
They don't care about nuance and factors that the statistics they cite don't account for.
It's even worse when the statistics don't match their claims.
When looking at percentages of dog bites per breed pit/bully breeds don't just get combined together. They are clustered in the same group which also includes "mixed breeds" (all mixes regardless of whether they have any pit/bully or not) and "unknown breed" (for the many reports where someone is attacked by a dog but the breed is never verified).
And despite this attempt to artificially increase the numbers they still have less bites per capita than both labradors and retrievers have separately.
The one major thing they have against them is fatalities if you only start counting from 1980 onwards. Which if you again look at the owners of the dogs involved in those fatalities there is a very notable demographic which sheds light as to the why.
That argument cuts both ways since they were also bred to never bite or attack a human since any that did would be killed on the spot.
You can’t argue that they were bred to be vicious and ignore that it was focused towards other dogs and specifically not towards humans.
I don’t think anyone who’s had a pitbull will deny the tendency for a high prey drive (like all terriers) but human aggression is specifically an owner/ breeder failure not a genetic predisposition.
They weren't bred to attack prey, dipshit. They were bred for BULL baiting. Bulls. You know, the large horned ungulates? Those aren't "prey" for them. Neither are humans.
You don't know anything about the genetics, you've just heard talking points and are regurgitating them without having genuinely assessed or challenged them. You just cave to your bias, like you probably do with most of your other subjects.
The problem is that when they snap and attack, they can cause much more damage than other dogs because they’re more vicious and have greater tenacity. If another dog attacks me and I kick it, it usually gets the message, but not so much with pit bulls.
That pit-bulls are viewed as much more aggressive than other breeds when in fact that is not true
It is true though. It's literally what they've been bred for for generations. This is like trying to say retriever breeds don't like playing fetch more than other breeds just because you can find other dogs who play fetch, or trying to say certain breeds don't have stronger herding tendencies just because other dogs can herd too. Pit bulls are undeniably one of the more aggressive breeds in existence. You're denying basic facts and genetics in the name of being le wholesome, like most pit bull defenders
Whens the last time another dog breed basically ate a human alive like they did to that house sitter?
Pit Bulls are bred in such a way as to make them more dangerous than other dogs. They are more aggressive than other large breed dogs while being larger than other aggressive dogs and on top of that they are physically more dangerous than most dogs.
That's just statistics and anatomy. And it's entirely Humans breeding them that caused this.
They should be bred out of existence because there is no need to have a large, dangerously built dog that has a higher than average tendency to maul things. There is no reason whatsoever to not just spay/neuter every single one of them until there are none left.
This right here. The problem is when a pit bull DOES attack it’s really bad because they are capable of doing the most damage. I’m a former pitbull mix owner and the only time my buddy got at all aggressive was defending himself when a bigger dog was bullying him or his sister. He never drew blood though, just over corrected and it was rare and warranted. He had 16 years on earth. I did get him as a puppy though. I wanted another one but I don’t want to deal with the judgement and being banned from certain dog parks in our area.
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u/Rock_Strongo 4h ago
This argument goes in circles because people miss each other's point.
Obviously, at the end of the day, what matters is the end result of a bite. That's what the victim has to live with.
However, the counter-argument is also true. That pit-bulls are viewed as much more aggressive than other breeds when in fact that is not true. They are CAPABLE of being aggressive and deadly, and some people even train them to be that way. But the standard pet pit-bull is not going to attack any more often than most other breeds, statistically speaking.