So where’s the valid data for dozens of kids a year being chewed to death by Pit Bulls, brimstone breath?
Read my post a little more closely. I never said they did. My point was that crucible’s assertion that public perception against pit bulls “is now, and always has been, and is increasingly, on the side of banning pit bulls” is something “I wouldn’t [make] out-of-hand.” It’s not an important point to the BSL debate, but crucibile’s blanket statement that they are becoming more unpopular is just as anecdotal and perceptual as my impression that they are, in fact, becoming more and more popular and accepted. I already said it may be location dependent, but pit bulls have become increasingly popular in Chicago. They are the second most popular breed behind Labradors, making up 5.5% of all licensed dogs in Chicago, ahead of German Shepherds. In my zip code, they’re number one, with 12.3% of registrations. They certainly have become a lot more popular than they were ten years ago.
This may be specific to my location, but I wouldn’t bet the house that pits and calls for dog bans are becoming more popular. They may be in some locations, they may not be in other locations. This being the Straight Dope, I don’t think blanket statement that the public perception of pit bulls is getting worse is necessarily accurate, so I couldn’t just leave it unchallenged.
Fine - I’ll take back ‘kids’ and say ‘dozens of the very young, or the very old’. I’m sure you’ll consider this a major victory for ‘your side’. :rolleyes:
Point is, it’s the less-able to defend themselves that get chewed up. Heck, just looking back at the last 2-3 years, and assuming ever case of ‘unknown’ was *not *a pit, the following kids lost their lives to those ‘innocent doggies’:
Levi Watson, age 4
Jah Niya White, age 2
Jordan Ryan, age 5
Samuel Zamudio, age 2
Daniel Doe, age 2
Arianna Merrbach, age 5
Nephi Selu, age 6
Beaue Rutledge, age 2
Jordyn Arndt, age 4
Tyler Jett, age 7
Monica Laminack, 21 months
Daxton Borchardt, 14 months
Ryan Maxwell, age 7
Isaiah Aguilar, age 2
Christian Gormanous, age 4
Jace Valdez, 23 months
Kylar Johnson, 4 yrs
Jazilyn Mesa, 15 months
Makayla Darnell, 3 days
Michael Naglee, 11 months
Tyzhel McWilliams, 8 months
Rayden Bruce, 3 months
Tarilyn Bowles, 3 weeks
Salvador Cotto, 6 months
Savannah Edwards, 2 years
Makayla Woodward, 5 yrs
Darius Tillman, 15 days
Annabelle Mitchell, 7 months
Neveah Bryant, 20 months
Mya Maeda, 11 days
That’s what, 30 right there? Doesn’t include victims over 65. Doesn’t include the kids that got chewed up and lived, but *scarred for life.
Since 2005, pit-type dogs have accounted for 173 of the total 251 people chewed to death. That’s 69%.
**
Repeat after me: 4-5% of the doggie population: 60-80% of fatal dog bites.*
Sources, please.
OK then how do tall trees differ? Children have been killed when trees fall over. They are helpless to defend themselves, when a neighbors tree rots out and collapses on them. They can even be killed in a secured home when one of those monsters crashes through their home. No reports of pit bulls destroying hims and killing their inhabitants. Trees are a real menace and we should do something about them.
So far 5 people have been killed by falling trees this year.
23 people have died so far, this year, falling out of bed. I’m sure if we banned bed frames and allowed mattresses no thicker than 12 inches we could cut back on those deaths!
54 people die from lightning strikes each year.
When the odds of being killed by lightning are greater than being killed by dogs, I have real trouble accepting this is a persistent problem that needs a drastic solution.
Out of what, an approximate total average of 17.3333 deaths by Pit Bull per year since 2011? Still not “dozens”.
And neither the victims nor the dogs should have been in proximity in the first place. Yet somehow, in your mind, the entirety of the blame rests on the dogs.
That’s what, an average of 10 per year? How is that “dozens”?
21.625 per year still isn’t “dozens”.
Repeat after me: “I, DragonAsh, have an irrational fear of anything which remotely resembles a Pit Bull.”
I’m guessing the list is from Wikipedia.
Again please provide cites in how you come by this information.
American pit bull terriers is one specific breed among ‘pit bull type dogs’ it alone accounts for 5.6% of the Registered dog population.
The 60-80% you are using includes all ‘pit bull type dogs’ which is composed of several breeds of dogs and mixes, unregistered and registered.
If you can’t understand the misrepresentation of data you are presenting I don’t think we can have a rational discussion on this issue.
We need trees and we need beds. We don’t need Pit Bulls. People can always just buy a normal dog that doesn’t kill people.
Your analogy would only make sense if there were one type of bed that was far more dangerous to kids than other types. One that looked cool so people bought it but it has no benefits over normal beds that are much safer. That would be a bed we should ban. Or sue out of existence. Or regulate away.
Just like we should with Pits.
We can arguably do just fine without trees. We certainly don’t need beds. Entire cultures get by just fine without what we in the US view as a necessity.
People want these things in the same way that people want their dogs. Having them around improves their quality of life.
If you want to sue the owners of dangerous dogs out of existence by all means do so. I expect you’ll need to prove their dog is actually dangerous though. Not just claim it is because it has short hair.
I personally am not philosophically opposed to BSL, even though I am against it. I do think the increase in dog bite deaths recently is something that needs to be taken seriously (even though I think it is a small overall risk). But, given the data and opinions from the CDC, animal control groups, the results of the Denver dog legislation, veterinary associations, the American Bar Association, etc., I am not convinced this is the best way of reducing harm. I think energy would be better spent on spay/neuter programs, enforcement of existing license/registration laws, mandatory microchipping, laws against prolonged tethering, even mandatory dog/owner training. With 6 million plus “pit bull type” dogs out there (that we know of) and growing, I don’t see legislating them away as being a viable or practical option, and that’s not getting into the issues of what is considered a “pit bull type” dog and what the legal requirements for that are.
I feel similarly about gun control. I think it’s a far bigger problem than pit bulls, and is similarly prone to "accidents "and bad owners, but I don’t think it’s practical or fruitful to try to legislate that away. I’d rather spend my energy on the legal aspects of gun ownership/pit bull ownership than trying to outright ban them in an effort to reduce harm.
Now we’re getting closer to the crux of the issue, I think.
The question has been asked, but not answered, a number of times in this thread: What exactly do we mean when we say “pit bull”?
[ul][li]Some folks want to define the term to mean any purebred dog belonging to one of a number of specific breeds (Staffordshire Terrier, American Pitbull Terrier, etc.). [/li][li]Others would include those dogs, along with many of the mixes based on those breeds.[/li][li]Still others would define it as any dog who has any lineage that traces back to any of the ‘bully breeds’.[/li][li]And then there are those for whom “pit bull” means nothing more or less than any “big scary dog”.[/ul][/li]
I am pretty sure that the first group does *not *account for 60-80% of fatal dog bites, but I’m almost certain that that last group does.
You mean the article with the intro that includes:
You’re not actually anticipating that DA is going to come and respond thoughtfully to all these bothersome details, are you? Hope not, because he works in great big messy strokes and can’t be troubled to actually respond thoughtfully to things you actually say and data you actually provide. IF he did, this would be a much more interesting debate.
(To be fair, he doesn’t have a lot to work with and he has an awful lot to answer, so I understand why he would find it too daunting a task to address seriously.)
As long as you brought it up, though, let me reiterate things I pointed out earlier, starting with the fact that it isn’t really meaningful to hold up “pit bulls” vs. the entire canine population, when at least half that population is not reasonably capable of killing a human being. So if we lop off the under-20-pounds half of the canine population that are almost never involved in dog bite fatalities in other than very unusual circumstances, the 5% / 69% turns into 10% (of the canine population that is remotely capable of killing human beings).
Percentages are really sort of hysterical when we are talking about the kind of numbers we have here. That 69% is 173 over 8 years, an average of 21 people per year. Making it 21 killer dogs per per year. Out of 4.2 million.
And of course there is the issue of what is an actual “pit bull”, as we have discussed ad nauseum and as DA just ignores. Given the sorry state of the data collection, as frequently described by various researchers, we have no reason to think that all the dogs described as “pit bulls” really were one of the breeds that it is generally agreed are being referred to by that name.
More than 53% of the canine population is mixed breed. Mixed breeds that resemble the general description of a “pit bull” type dog are exploding in number, a fact confirmed by every imaginable source: shelters, rescue groups, veterinarians, anecdotal reports, licensing. Muscular, short muzzle, short hair…bingo, KILLER PIT BULL!
For people who genuinely believe (for reasons they so far refuse to explain coherently) that action must be taken against millions of dogs and the people who love them in hopes of preventing 20 or so deaths per year (while showing no such concern for the many other things that are equally or far more deadly) a much more reasonable and honest and fair approach would be to ban all dogs that weigh 35 pounds or more and are not easily identifiable as a breed or breed mix that is in no way similar to any sort of bully-type, Rottweiler, GSD, Husky, Mastiff, Great Dane, <insert other breeds that have killed here>. That way you’d eliminate nearly all fatalities. Why leave out the victims of dogs that dont’ look “pit - like”, they are just as dead.
DA is very fond of percentages and numbers, as well as being fond of pretending that owner behavior is not a meaningful factor, or that the behaviors identified as causing problems leading to fatalities are evenly distributed across breeds. But of course that isn’t even close to the truth.
Compared to the 20-30 deaths of people, which are, of course, unfailingly reported and tracked, we have the acts of abuse, neglect and cruelty directed at dogs.
According to the Humane Society:
Wow. Only 5% of the dog population, but 25% of the abused! 1 in 20 dogs is a pit bull type, but at least 1 in 4 of the abused and neglected dogs is a pit bull type. And that’s only media reported abuse cases. Most abuse, according to THS, is never reported or recorded.
It also doesn’t consider the other kinds of treatment that lead to fatalities, such as “resident” status vs. “family dog” status. Far more common with pit bull types. Chaining, being intact, etc. These things are not distributed evenly across breeds, across types, even across similarly-sized dogs. As I described in detail, based on direct knowledge and experience, the reality of DA’s favorite example, the Golden Retriever, is very different than the reality of pit bull type dogs.
And finally, we return to the point I made a week ago about risk assessment, only this time with science!
[j. Pinkman] Science, bitch. [/j.Pinkman]
It isn’t, and it doesn’t, which is just one of the many, many things that Dragon has skipped acknowledging, much less addressing, in this discussion.
It’s been very disappointing that none of the anti-pitbull crowd has proven willing or able to really take up the debate honestly.
This sounds good to me. Let’s do it. Any dog that’s on the list that prohibited by insurance companies would work for me.
So banning pits would eliminate 25% of the abused dogs out there. That’s good news, since those abused dogs are much more likely to attack humans. That’s an argument for banning Pits, not against it.
Sure, the abusers might just move on to other dogs. But this would slow them down. Many might not.
:dubious:
You know trees are where oxygen comes from, right?
Whatever.
Yes, having dogs improves quality of life. Having Pit Bulls does not. You can replace a Pit with a Lab and there is no loss of quality of life.
We do have lighting alarms on golf courses so that golfers know to head in if there is a chance of lightening. Is this a “drastic solution”? I think it’s reasonable to take precautions to avoid being killed, even if the number of deaths is small.
Same thing with Pits. It’s not drastic to tell people to just buy a normal dog instead of one bred to kill. It’s entirely reasonable and practical, even if the numbers of deaths are small.
One source only. Most atmospheric oxygen comes from plankton.
When attempting to sound intelligent, real science (not the pretend, hippie kind) helps more.
Let’s be real clear about this: Are you in agreement with boytyperanma that we “can arguably do just fine without trees”?