A few years ago I asked this question to a relative who is a veterinarian. She said that pit bulls had an unfair reputation and they were often the sweetest dogs. If you train it wrong, it can be dangerous though.
The breed that she was most afraid of, that caused her the most problems? Cocker spaniels.
*Intrinsically *more dangerous? No.
Likely to be owned by someone who wanted to raise a dangerous dog? Unfortunately yes.
Heh. I’ve had cocker spaniels, and they were pretty harmless to anything larger than a pigeon–or maybe a cat. I don’t really buy into breed personality.
In the UK, believe it or not, they’re actually banned (well, for all intents and purposes). Mind you the act involved is regretted by many MPs involved in it. It should be obvious from reading the link just how bloody silly that legislation is. A practice for the Blair years, I guess.
Yet there’s still plenty of maiming going on. The funniest thing is the Staffie. To the untrained eye, it looks like a pit bull. I learned this running away from one once and finally realising that it did just want to play - pathetic as it sounds I just thought it was a vicious beast.
Now I was young enough then to drink under official UK health guidelines, but too young to have sex according to the law. So I was quite young 
So I have no experience with pit bulls as such. All I can say is that I have read some popular science books which have done the research and cite real papers and things. And sorry, but the truth is that pitbulls have been shown to be OVERALL vicious buggers.
And it’s for exactly the reason Chronos has mentioned. They don’t attack humans a great deal, it’s basically middling. It’s all about the bite. And it ISNT a myth. No doubt there are other dogs with similarly strong bites (see the Staffie and other terriers - my extended family has loadsa terriers) but it’s the combination of the two that fuck em up.
Sorry but the stats don’t lie.
Olives, while it is not focussed upon this issue at all, it’s just a minor thing, I know you’re an animal lover and I also know you’ll love this book: "Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It’s So Hard to Think Straight About Animals.
Now you must recommend me a book. About psychology please, I know you know about that
I don’t think many people confuse jumping up with attacking. On the other hand, it is hard to interpreting biting, tearing and rending of flesh as anything other than attacking.
I don’t fear individual pit bulls out in public who appear well-behaved. I’ve made friends with them (with the owner’s permission). I’m much more wary around small dogs who feel threatened easily and can be snappish.
Thing is, if little Muffin the poodle or Dolly the cocker spaniel are from bad stock and ill-trained, you can get a nasty nip. When a pit bull or other aggressive breed loses it, the outcomes are often a lot worse.
woof
Simple, pit bulls are banned in some US cities and Canadian provinces, too.
Originally bred for bear and bull baiting as well as dog fighting, aggression towards humans was always regaqrded as undesireable, since handlers had to be able to interact and control their dogs in very high-stress situations. The fact that so many people own them now as “mean” or “guard” dogs speaks only to the ignorance and ineptness of humans. Properly bred and raised, APBTs are sweet and friendly towards humans; the problem is, they are very often poorly bred and poorly raised. That’s a human fault, not an inherent fault with the breed. Unfortunately you combine a strong, athletic breed of dog with a typically high innate level of animal-aggression that’s popular with unwitting, irresponsible owners who do not socialize, train, exercise or understand it and you get a high level of bite incidents. Same thing happens with toy poodles and Chihuahuas (both notoriously snappy breeds), but of course they’re tiny dogs and rarely cause much harm when they go after people so their aggression goes largely unreported and is even thought to be cute by some owners.
Pit bulls DO tend to be aggressive towards other dogs, especially those of the same sex. And, being terriers, their high prey drive means they are not always safe around smaller dogs and other anmals. (The same can be said for greyhounds and other sighthounds, which often tend to chase and kill smaller animals.) This is not a “fault” though. Just something that a responsible owner understands and manages.
The UKC recognises APBTs (American Pit Bull Terriers) and says this about temperament:
chiroptera, I think you’re correct. Though maybe I’m biased, because I like pit bulls.
Woof, indeed. We’ve been over this a lot, there’s a LOT of threads on this topic in the SDMB. I’ll try to limit myself to a few observations:
You’re both wrong. So to speak.
Because pit bulls were bred for aggression toward dogs, and from bulldog stock bred for aggression toward bulls, they can be aggressive toward dogs and livestock (although it varies widely from dog to dog). That no more makes them aggressive toward humans than your Lab, bred to be duck aggressive, or your Dachshund, bred to be badger-aggressive, or your cat, bred to be mouse-aggressive. Everyone takes it for granted a dog can smell parts-per-million of smuggled drugs, but for some reason some people think pit bulls can’t distinguish between a human and a Weimeraner.
I’ve seen and evaluated at least one dog, a pit bull mix, whom I would say was unqualifiedly, intolerably dog aggressive – and she was super sweet and submissive around humans. She knew the difference.
No more than any other breed of equivalent physical capabilities. They are not “psycho;” their brains don’t “grow too large for their heads;” they don’t “snap,” they give the same warnings other dogs do; they have the same jaw structure other dogs do.
And I found the Time Cube webpage. The CDC and the American Veterinary Medical Association have both said it’s not possible to generate scientifically useful bite statistics. Here’s one citation for that (warning, .pdf):
Bolding and color mine, for easy reference.
Since this is such a hot-button topic for some people, I’m going to re-emphasize this: scientists and veterinarians have said, for the record, there are no accurate “dog bite statistics” by breed, because they’re not possible. Again, to sum up in my own words:
Bite reports are not rigorously collected. They only come to our attention when people who were bitten bother to report the bites. An unknown number of other bites go untracked.
Breed Identification in these reports is notoriously unreliable. Most people cannot identify dog breeds, especially pit bulls. Additionally, even if they could, there’s an incentive to describe one’s own bite incident in the most dramatic way possible. Few people want to admit to having been maimed by a Miniature Poodle; everyone thinks you’re a stud if you tell them you survived a vicious pit bull attack.
No one knows how many dogs there really are in the United States.
No one knows how many pit bulls there are as a subset of that number of dogs.
Entirely leaving aside the fact that the reports are unscientifically tallied and tend toward bias, how can we determine whether pit bulls bite disproportionately to their presence in the population if we don’t know how many dogs there are, period, and what proportion might be pits?
This isn’t new – it’s been presented on the web before. Hell, the date on my JAVMA citation is
Therefore, someone who presents statistics that pit bulls – or any breed – bite with any claimed frequency is simply spreading unscientific ignorance. Period. They have an agenda.
I don’t think anyone’s ever said that in these threads. Why do you keep posting as if someone has? The point is, they are no more nor less dangerous than other dogs of equivalent mass.
I can stomp a poodle dead while reading a book. They simply don’t have the jaw structure or tenacity of a pit bull.
I’m over 50 and it’s ALWAYS statistically been pit bulls doing the greatest amount of damage. I’ve told a number of pit bull owners their dog was going to cause serious problems (based on the dog’s behavior) and as sure as the sun rises in the East they ended up having to put them down. These are not dogs that simply bite and release in fear. Once they attack they don’t stop and that’s made worse by a fairly strong jaw.
but someone will be along shortly to explain why people are stupid for not recognizing the signs of a frightened dog. All dogs can and will bite. Pit bulls will shred your arm on a good day and kill you on a bad day.
Well, now, see the Op asked which breed was the most dangerous. Now a Pit Bull is actually a rather sweet tempered breed, as opposed to many nasty little rat dogs. BUT when one of them nasty little rat dogs goes after you, you laugh it off.
You don’t laugh off a Pit Bull attack. They have a very nasty bite, about the worst of any common breed.
And, altho a Pit Bull raised as a family pet is no more dangerous than any other breed, there are a LOT of Pit Bulls out there raised as a Fighting dog, and those are more dangerous. It’s also not hard to train a Pit Bull for fighting, as opposed to a few breeds where it’d be very hard indeed.
So- your chance of running into a pit bull trained as a fighting dog is higher than just about any other common breed, And a Pit bulls bite is way up there also.
So yeah, a Pit Bull is more dangerous than other dogs.
But again, a Pit Bull *properly raised as a pet *is no more dangerous than any other powerful dog in their size class. Thereby they are fine as pets. If you would have a German Shepherd, A Collie, Husky, etc, then a Pit Bull is also a good choice.
I don’t believe this is true. Pit bulls are relatively small breeds, in the 30-50 lb range IIRC. They can be dangerous for sure, as any dog in that weight range can be. But there are plenty of larger dogs that by their sheer size are more dangerous than a pit.
That plus popular media - I think the highest incidence of Dobermans being the pariahs (heh!) would map nicely with the popularity of Magnum P.I. and The Boys from Brazil.
There have been numerous posts in these threads denying media reports of pit bull attacks on the basis of breed misidentification or that the dog involved is a mix and not a purebred pit bull.
Exhibit A. 
No dog maulings since they were banned in this province. And if you have one from before the ban you are required to carry a large insurance policy. I realize it’s as much or more the owner than the breed, in a lot of ways. But legislation was enacted to protect innocent children, without regard for the tender feelings of the owners. I feel people were able to endorse it because after every horrid mauling, there stood the tearful owners with clear honesty saying, ‘Garsh but he’s just never, ever, ever shown any such inclination. We are baffled!’ If the people who own the animal, love the animal, know it better than anyone, are shocked and taken aback it sends the message that owners are useless at judging the dog’s nature or predicting his behaviour! It makes it very hard to give credit to those arguing, " But I have had many, they were all sweet and good natured…"
One person killed by a dog is too many. Clearly, we could live without dogs. Many of them perform wonderful service and can be trusted with your very life, though. Since Pits and their allied breeds have a life style that centers on being the protector of their ‘family’, any person who somehow triggers the protection at all costs brain cell that pits have is in danger for their life. If up to me, I would make breeding of pit and their allied breeds illegal. We can live without them, and the 20 or so people they kill every year for no apparent reason? Hey, they will live and not die a horrible death.
Isn’t that easy? Human life vs. some potential dog sometime in the future? Banning pits will save lives as surely as you breath. Can you really think of a reason to continue that breed? Don’t kill the existing ones, just neuter them and stop breeding new ones.
Define ‘pit bull’.
While popularly believed, pretty much everything you wrote is either incorrect or applicable to all dog breeds. Pits were specifically selected to reduce their aggression towards humans.
We could certainly ban all dogs. But how many lives would that cost? You don’t have to go very far to find accounts of dogs saving humans’ lives. Assuming the statistics posted by other folks here are accurate, there are a total of 30-ish humans killed by dogs each year in this country. Do you really think that the number of humans saved by dogs is less than 30?
First of all, there are no statistics. There’s no way to know how many of each breed of dog there is out there, and dog attacks and bites are under-reported and rarely investigated to determine any factual data. Most of the time that a dog harms a person there days it is attributed to a Pit Bull, even if that Pit Bull happens to be a hamster.
Secondly, even if you’re talking about reporting this can’t be true because Pit Bulls were barely recognized as existing until the 70s, and it was well into the 80s before they reached their current level of popularity, and ignomy. Popular conceptions about the danger of dogs is based on media enhanced image intended to instill fear.
All dogs can potentially be dangerous to humans, and that danger increases with size. And pound for pound Pit Bulls are high on the potential danger list because a greater proportion of their weight is in the their jaws as opposed to other dogs, and they are somewhat more muscular than many dogs for the same height or length. But there’s still no evidence that Pit Bulls are more dangerous to humans than any other dog of similar size. It is out of the ordinary for any dog to attack a human being, and it is usually the result of poor training, or worse intentionally bad training.