I can’t ‘tell’ if you’re a shitty owner at a glance, you dumb fuck. But I can*'t tell if you aren’t either*.
One would assume bad owners would be evenly distributed among the breeds, but if a) pits account for the majority if ‘chewed to death by dog’ fatalities, and b) you insist that the breed itself is really just a peach-dandy loving friendly ol’ breed of dog’, then c) there must be an -awful lot of *really really *shitty owners for there to be so many loving, friendly pits turned in to land sharks, so d) yes, there would certainly appear to be a considerably higher likelihood of you being a really really shitty owner.
So when I see shitty owner you and your shitty dog coming down the street, I’m going to error on the side of ‘my child not getting chewed to death’. I’m glad you like your dog of choice, and you seem quite happy exposing your family to the risk. More power to ya’, just keep your dog away from me and mine.
ANECDOTE: We have cute little gerbil-esque dogs. They’ll annoy you to death long before a pitbull could even tear your arm all the way off.
We had a pair of burglars killed by cuteness just last month. Did anyone rise up in arms then? Did anyone start a petition? Or a pit thread? (Just shows the “libtard confirmation bias of the hive mind here”…)
I don’t think that when you can easily find stories every day from all over the world reported by reputable news organizations that you can easily call them ‘anecdotal’. Not unless you are tuned to ‘anti-confirmantion-bias’. People do often notice and hear those things that confirm their beliefs, no matter the topic…but if a list of stories from every English speaking country about their dog problems is under your nose, don’t try to say they are ‘anecdotal’.
State and federal government health and safety organizations focus on finding and evaluating risks to the population. The reports they publish all ‘confirm’ the assertion that pit bulls cause and disproportionate amount of human misery, relative to their numbers in the population of dogs kept in households across the US. They bend over all directions to be sure there is nothing but scientific method in their studies.
The bolded part is the core flaw in your thinking.
Compared to the total number of pit bulls, much less the total number of dogs, period, the number of pit bulls inflicting serious damage and death on human beings is very small.
There are approximately 83 million dogs in the U.S. There were 34 fatalities from dog bites in 2012. 20 of those were attributed to dogs believed to be pit bulls. So out of the 83 million dogs in the US in 2012, 20 killed people. Now multiply the number of dogs by the number of human-dog encounters that happened in 2012 - it’s a very safe assumption that the 83 million dogs certainly encountered and interacted with at least 1 human being *at least once *every day for 365 days. And that is, of course, a ridiculously conservative estimate…but it still gives us more than 30 billion encounters between dogs and people wherein the dog could have killed the person, and in fact it happened **20 times out of at least 30 billion possible times. **
***That is LESS than a ONE IN A BILLION risk. ***
Sit with that for a little while.
And if you still feel that it is rational and prudent for you to fear pit bulls, then you need to go and spend every penny you have on the lottery, because your chances of winning it are vastly better, statistically, than the chances of you getting killed by a pit bull, so why not?
And if you continue to think in this manner, then you have a whole lot of work ahead of you keeping your child safe… it’s exhausting to think about what will be required of you to prevent your child’s accidental death…NEVER let her ride a bicycle, or ride a bus, or ride in a car… or walk anywhere she has to cross the street and be in the path of cars… because all of those things are, again, VASTLY more likely to end up killing or maiming your daughter than her being killed or seriously injured by ANY dog, much less a specific breed…
Honestly, I’m no math whiz, but the most basic comprehension of statistics and probabilities should show you that fearing any dog for any reason OTHER than that you have direct knowledge of a specific dog’s potentially dangerous behavior, is completely ridiculous and has absolutely nothing to do with anything resembling a rational understanding of reality.
In fact, now that I think about it, if you still insist on giving a wide berth, make sure it doesn’t include things like crossing the street… Since the chances that you and your family are going to be hurt crossing that street to avoid passing near a pit bull and its owner (or a hundred all at once, even!) are orders of magnitude greater than the chances of being hurt by the dogs you are trying to avoid.
The logic and method are to be commended. Even if you equip yourself with a gun with which to kill the pit bull as it attacks and rips apart your child, the fact is, you, or someone else in your family, is far more likely to be killed by that gun than by a pit bull…
So…the only rational way for us all to protect ourselves from the menace of pit bulls…animals that serve no useful purpose, the way that streets do, for example…the best way to protect ourselves is to
You think banning a breed of dog is actually going make it go away? I suppose it might work…in exactly the same way prohibition protected us from the evils of alcohol and banning drugs has ended the drug problem.
I think crucible is equating pit bulls and guns, implying that the arguments are identical and presumably fail identically. (I think the comparison fails, not least because just about no one I know of is seeking to ban guns, so there’s that.)
No shit, Sherlock; this was embarrassingly evident thanks to your pathetic, hilariously flawed attempt at statistical analysis. Seriously, just put down the shovel.
:rolleyes:
You appear to be dumber than 10lbs of shit in a 5lb bag, so this may come as a complete and utter shock to you, but the smart people in the room tend to give dangerous things a wide berth…like, you know, giving cars a wide berth while crossing the street. I’m sure there’s a dog-related analogy we could make in there somewhere…
No shit, Sherlock; this was embarrassingly evident thanks to your pathetic, hilariously flawed attempt at statistical analysis. Seriously, just put down the shovel.
:rolleyes:
You appear to be dumber than 10lbs of shit in a 5lb bag, so this may come as a complete and utter shock to you, but the smart people in the room tend to give dangerous things a wide berth…like, you know, giving cars a wide berth while crossing the street. I’m sure there’s a dog-related analogy we could make in there somewhere…
*Successfully *banning pits would bring the # of pit-related dog bites & deaths to zero. It would almost certainly reduce the total number of dog-bite fatalities. Like prohibition and the drug war, however, the problem is there’s no realistic way to make the ban actually work.
And probably forever we will be faced with the hysteria of people who react irrationally to all the drama they are fed by the media, it is apparently an inescapable condition of the modern world.
I didn’t know Rotties were responsible for chewing dozens of kids to death each year.
Smoking rates in the US have fallen sharply in the last 30-40 years, from over 40% to under 20%. That’s despite no outright ban on cigarettes. Instead, they’ve restricted where you can smoke, they’ve made it more expensive, and media exposure has made smoking less socially acceptable (less smoking in movies, for example). A very successful approach; no reason you can’t do the same with people that want to own shitty dogs.
I don’t think I really want to get into this debate, I was just skimming the thread. But I have to seek clarification.
“There were 34 fatalities… …so… …20 [dogs] killed people” Huh? No, 34 killed people. At least, 34 people died. Unless some single dog(s) killed more than one person, which I admit is possible, 34 dead people translates into roughly 34 killing dogs.
You say that 20 of them were “believed to be pit bulls”.
20/34 = 58.8% of fatal attacks are attributed to pit bulls. Please tell me that pit bulls (or “dogs believed to be pit bulls”) make up 58.8% of the dog population of the US. In other words, of those 83 million, more than 48 million are pits. Otherwise it seems that pit bulls represent a higher-than-other-breeds danger. Or your statistics require some other explanation.