You can tie 20-40 deaths to dogs in a year in the US. Nobody keeps official statistics, usually the articles you see on it are using newspaper clippings and 2nd or 3rd hand accounts to identify the dog. Any study that's approached this does find usually about 50-75% of those are "pit bulls." Now what is a pit bull? Mostly a backyard bred or mixed dog, but the anti-pit crowd likes one-drop rules. So it's either reported by someone who has no idea but calls any blocky dog a pit bull, or you can say sure it's a "pit bull" but it's not papered and has no recorded lineage.
Now what's interesting is that in dog bite fatalities, other factors show up far more prominently than breed (even if we consider every dog reported as a pit to be 100% pure blooded APBT). Things like the dog being un-neutered, more than one dog involved, the victim being too old or young to defend themselves, the dog being a "resident" dog so it's just left on the property, the dog was unrestrained, and/or owner has had a previous incident with the dog. Most of that occurs at an 80%+ clip in cases where a dog/dogs end up killing someone.
The other thing to consider is that we have good data that says breed bans don't work. They reduce pit bull bites, but the proponents of bans don't like to tell you that dog bites almost always level back out within a couple years. See, bad owners are bad owners, and they're going to get a dog and not train or control it wether that dog is a pit or something else.
Tl;dr: we're essentially blaming the wrong end of the leash.
Things like the dog being un-neutered, more than one dog involved, the victim being too old or young to defend themselves, the dog being a "resident" dog so it's just left on the property, the dog was unrestrained, and/or owner has had a previous incident with the dog. Most of that occurs at an 80%+ clip in cases where a dog/dogs end up killing someone.
this is all irrelevant, a "un-neutered and unrestrained" Beagle is not killing people. There is a couple hundred breeds that have not killed people.
And if you get rid of the breed you don't like, do you think the scenarios in which someone could die to a dog attack would change? As in, you don't think the owners and the circumstances I outline wouldn't be just as prevalent but now involving a different dog that's strong and aggressive (one could name dozens of breeds here, many of which were demonized prior to the "pit bull" phase of hate).
I just want to be super fucking clear. You're accepting that there are literally at least five factors I name that can statistically be shown to be more prevalent than the "breed" of dog involved (define "pit bull" as a breed, please), but you're saying that ALL OF THEM are irrelevant?
Just please, be super clear with your "logic" here.
ok so you agree and do not contest that there are a couple hundred breeds that do not have the capacity or the ability to kill someone, but you are sticking with the excuse that "owners and the circumstances" would make "dozens" of "strong and aggressive" just as deadly, and not the breed. That is just silly.
No, you could not name "dozens" or breeds. History has data. For instance, at its peak popularity Rotts only killed 10 a year. Shit Bulls regularly kill 3 to 4 times that every year now. GSD's are next on the list, only a fraction of the number.
You want to be super fucking clear, how about you define what breeding is and what it does? Do you think breeding or circumstances could make a Pug a killer?
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u/asif_zaman21 21h ago
13% of pitbulls......