Holy shit. You didn’t tell me that the expert eyewitnesses you were relying on for canine breed identification were actually helicopter pilots. Now I’m totally convinced that your random anecdotes are worth more than a pile of dog squeeze. You’re really good at debating stuff.
Televisions falling on kids kill more people than all dog fatalities put together - 41 in 2011. Ban 'em. (Or at least all televisions over 30 pounds.)
Bathtubs. Every year over 400 people drown in bathtubs! (Many of them children.) Why would anyone have one in the house knowing that it is statistically that much more dangerous than a shower? Criminalize them. Get rid of bathtub rings.
In both cases the child who died had no say on the presence of a television set or bathtub in the house.
BTW, it is well established that most bites, the vast majority of them, including fatalities, occur within households by dogs within the victims extended family and/or within the owner’s property limits.
Let me however actually make a point for those who would like to some controls placed on Pit Bulls and several other breeds … these dogs may be less human aggressive than many other breeds (including that yappy biting ferret of a dog, the Skye Terrier) but five Skye Terriers attacking are less likely to cause serious harm than the one rare Rott or German Shepherd or Doberman or Pit that attacks. Is it reasonable to hold ownership of certain stronger and/or larger breeds and mixed breeds (perhaps using a weight at particular age metric or expected breed adult weight for simplicity) up to higher standard, requiring that the owner first get certified as having passed a class on dog obedience, control, and behavior?
Mandating neutering of at least all male dogs who are not being bred by professional breeders or who are show dogs also seems like a reasonable option.
While I see merit in your last line, I also must point out that society needs TVs and bathtubs.
Society has no “need” for televisions but it can meet its desire to have them while totally eliminating the carnage that is caused by televisions falling on children by outlawing all televisions over 30 pounds.
There is also no need for bathtubs: people can get clean just fine in showers. Most people do. The killing fields that are America’s bathtubs are all the more impressive given that only a small percent of the American population uses bathtubs (other than as a shower stall) with any regularity. Bathtubs present literally an order of magnitude greater risk than dog bite fatalities.
I would ask the same thing of a mother who would buy a trampoline for a small child and walk away . There is a greater element of danger
I would ask parents of toddlers why they would give their kids skateboards. You seem to be giving analogies without answering . Would you let a toddler ride a two wheeler unattended?no…because statistically it is more dangerous . Same with pit bulls.
Same with any dog.
So your issue is not with Pit Bulls but with those who inadequately supervise their Pit Bulls (or other dog)? Your position is mainly that someone should not buy a Pit Bill for a small child and walk away?
Toddlers (supervised or not) are not who die and get injured most often on skateboards, bicycles, or trampolines btw.
As well, pit bulls kill children, supervised or not, with a similar frequency as they kill able body adults, including men in their physical prime.
No other breed or type of dog kills such a broad spectrum of humans.
Go to YouTube and search for pit bull attacks five police UK.
Even thou banned in 1991, one pit bull recently mauled five British police officers, 2 seriously. The video show the prolonged mauling, as well as 5 cops running for their lives, only to get beat up by one dog. It finally ended when a cop arrived with a gun. But don’t tell Karen Delise and the national canine research council. In her book, that she dedicates to her own pit bull in the preface, her only mention of police shootings are that “police ride into town with both guns blazing at anything that resembles a put bull”
If a pit hull can take on 5 cops, maul 5, 2 seriously, having a parent stop a pit hull piticide in progress is laughable.
By the way, these 5 bites, 2 serious, offer an explanation of why bites in the UK are still up after the ban
Where the TV analogy fails is that all the deaths caused by TVs would need to be caused by a few certain models of them that could easily be banned, leaving people to use the regular TVs just fine.
There’s no need for Pits, Rotts, Dobermans and other dangerous dogs at all outside of military and police or guard dogs.
Get a golden retriever. Problem solved. Kids don’t get maimed regularly. It’s not complicated.
Kids don’t get maimed “regularly” NOW. The incidence of this risk is so amazingly, staggeringly low that you’d laugh at anyone who expended as much ink and law on any other risk in the same category.
Statistically falling trees and branches cause 34 deaths per year. Trees seem to be even more dangerous than pitbulls. Your kid could be playing innocently in your yard and a tree from your neighbors yard could fall over and kill her! Clearly we need to ban those towers of wooden death.
Not all trees have killed or maimed, we have no deaths reported from falling bonsai trees.
I’ve heard a number of stories about pine trees falling and killing people so those must be really dangerous. Rather than looking at the facts around why pine trees might be responsible for more deaths lets just ban them. Problem solved.
Maybe there is a death or deaths reported from a bonsai being kept on a high shelf, and someone stood underneath that shelf, and a bird flew past and knocked the bonsai tree down, and it hit the person standing underneath on the noggin…
Shit. I ain’t getting no bonsai tree now! :mad:
But my question is why would anyone with little children, buy something that is statistically more dangerous…like a pit bull?
Because they want one.
Statistically a Ford explorer might be more dangerous than a Chevy Tahoe. I’m not going to fault anyone from buying the Explorer. It’s still a pretty safe vehicle overall.
Piticide would be a pit killing another pit. Piticide is actually what you are advocating.
In addition to what **boytyperanma **said, because we don’t always make decisions for children with ONLY safety in mind.
Case in point: I moved to a place with stairs, but I have a toddler. What kind of monster must I be to callously increase her risk of falling down the stairs, just because I happen to like having a third-floor den? Her risk of serious/fatal injury is increased by FAR more than it would be if I were to buy a dog–around 100,000 stair-falling injuries happen to children every year! Why would I buy something so statistically more dangerous?!
I await your severe castigation of my moral choices, and your vehement insistence that a single-level house should be the only acceptable choice by law.
After that we can start on the REAL monsters–the people who let their children have treehouses or skateboards.
That goes for you, too, Debaser. Where are the second-story-house bans?
Prejteach, you may have addressed your question to me but it has already been adequately answered.
The first question is whether or not to get a dog at all with a small child. If one is thinking about risks it’s a pretty bad idea with any dog. The smaller dogs have even lower risk of causing a serious bite but a much much larger risk of causing some bite as they are both often temermentally more aggressive and more likely to feel threatened by the lumbering danger that is toddler and preschool child. Many experts recommend against having dogs with smaller kids in the house and waiting until the youngest is over 4.
Why do most couples then still keep dogs they had before they had children or even get a dog, any dog, while a youngest is still 4 or younger? Because they feel (not analyze more likely than not) that the advantages to their child and family is greater because of dog ownership than not. Some small risks are worth taking to some people.
It is, to most people, worth buying the house with a bathtub rather than waiting to find a house that has only shower stalls, (even specing the house with tubs, including the big soaking one) even when they are aware of the fact that 400 plus people die each year drowning in bathtubs (10 fold more than all dog bites) because they do not see a risk large enough to offset the disadvantages (in comfort convenience and resale value).
Again, I’d go with the “they feel” rather than think, because with risks that small it probably never comes up as conscious thought process.
Let’s look at another one. On average about 4 people die on roller coasters each year in this country. Why would you ever take a child on one? Because it is damn fun and on the scale of risks 4 out of how ever many people ride those things each year that fun seems worth it.
Why do I take the risk to drive with my kid to some non-essential function, a party, a carnival? The risk we take in that car is clearly nonzero, the number one cause of unintentional death is car accidents. I do it because the advantage of going to those functions outweighs that small risk of doing so causing my child’s death.
It is why we get our kids bikes even though owning and riding a bike is riskier than walking places. The advantage of bike riding offsets the risks to most of us. And if we train our kids to ride safely and wear their helmets the risk is much less.
Debaser, again, the deaths associated with televisions are associated only with the larger sets. Destroy and outlaw only them. Why not?
And to reinforce the points already made: Goldens and Labs have killed. But that is extremely rare you say? Yes. It is even rarer. The line however between absurdly rare and more absurdly rare seems drawn as significant based on no rational basis.
Still those extremely rare (but yes easy to hype up) deaths may still be worth attempting to prevent. Attempting to prevent them with a method that has been shown not to work (breed specific bans) and in the process diverting funds and effort from methods that every expert organization tells us are more likely to be effective, however, is just dumb.
Can someone point to the study/ies being discussed on the frequency of dogs involved in fatal attacks being mis-identified as ‘pit bull-types’?
Also, still waiting for the cite for this.