It is true that pit bulls make up a hugely disproportionate number of reported dog attacks, it's also true that they are especially dangerous and have caused the most deaths by dog bite.

What many of these statistics fail to account for are environmental factors (pit bulls tend to be the most abused and most regularly abandoned dogs because of dog fighting and also because they are just a handful to properly train and care for.), it is also very difficult to gather accurate data on breed specific attacks/aggression because while pit bulls are the highest reported in most dog bite statistics, they are also not a breed as much as a group of breeds that includes:

The American Pit Bull Terrier
The American Staffordshire Terrier
The Staffordshire Bull Terrier, and
The American Bully

A study found that dogs classified as Pit Bulls only had 43.5% DNA from Pit Bull-type ancestry.

The study, carried out in two shelters in California and Arizona, also found that 62% of dogs labeled as Pit Bulls had less than a 50% DNA concentration from Pit Bull-type ancestry, Pit Bull facts and statistics show.

Identifying the right breed of dog in attacks and death is incredibly difficult. This is why the CDC stopped collecting breed-specific data in dog bite-related fatalities (DBRF) in 1998.

The fact that there’s no official data to go by makes it even harder to separate myths from facts regarding Pit Bull attacks in the US.

Okay cool, so pits might make headlines more because of their strength and ability to inflict fatal wounds easier than other breeds but that goes for most large dogs.

German Shepherds had a similar stigma back when Americans were still xenophobic toward German immigrants and there were similar attitudes around that breed in the mid twentieth century. Prior to WWII Pit Bulls were a working class icon and were as much or more known for their reputation as great working dogs and loyal and loving family dogs as fighting dogs or vicious guard dogs.

Pit Bulls were bred for a wide variety of reasons and selected for many different traits but like most dogs they were foremost bread for physical traits and secondly for their temperament toward humans.

So what happened?

Racism it's always racism.

No new owner may settle in the area so long as they possess such a dog. Critics argue that these bans are not based on sound scientific or statistical evidence—that pit bulls pose no greater risk than any other breed of dog. Advocates of these laws urge that the bans are crucial to protect the public health and safety from dangerous dogs. Yet, perhaps these concerns have less to do with dogs and more to do with the individuals who own them. Breed-specific legislation may be being used as a new form of redlining to keep minorities out of majority-white neighborhoods.

“We don’t want those people here,” a city council member said of the bans. Strong cultural ties exist between pit bull dogs and the Black community. The same is true of the Latino community. Research undertaken here to investigate this claim suggests that people of color are perceived to be the most likely owner of this breed of dog. While at the present time, actual ownership data is not available, if true ownership resembles the perceived distribution measured here, such a finding may form the basis for a legal claim. Under new law, breed-specific legislation could be challenged under the Fair Housing Act if it can be shown that these laws are disproportionately excluding minority groups.

-The Black Man's Dog: The Social Context of Breed Specific Legislation, by Ann Linder

https://law.lclark.edu/live/files/32171-25-1-third-articlepdf

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6107223/

https://www.avma.org/sites/default/files/resources/javma_000915_fatalattacks.pdf

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19644273/

https://twitter.com/GeeDee215/status/1338869829911146497

        • Nakoichi [they/them]
          ·
          2 years ago

          I posted this with as many of the best scientific sources I could find because in order to put this to rest we're gonna have to deworm a lot of brains.

      • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]
        ·
        2 years ago

        This is such an incredibly reductive way of thinking though. A leopard "only" has a bite fore of 300psi, are we just going to let people keep leopards as pets though? Obviously not, because they're instinctively such good hunters and stalkers. They scare me much more than lions personally, and definitely way more than any dog breed, even with their comparatively "low" bite force. I always got really scared when I used to hike though an area where leopards could be present.

        Judging animals by "bite force" is just foolish. This isn't me commenting on this post or pitbulls, just saying that deciding how lethal an animal's bite is by "bite force" is a fools erand.

          • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]
            ·
            2 years ago

            But then your argument that pitbulls are less dangerous because they have a lower bite force doesn't follow, because the correlation between bite force and "lethality" is weak in general.

            The racial context surrounding dogs is completely different in South Africa, just look at breed names like Rhodesian Ridgeback and Boerbull for example. Though I can definitely see how it's different in the USA, and the parallels to race science talking points. It's just completely different in South Africa.

      • TankieTanuki [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Wouldn't force rather than pressure be the appropriate quality to compare?

    • Duckduck [none/use name]
      ·
      2 years ago

      I actually haven’t commented anywhere else.

      Sorry, you have the same shrill tone as OP.

      “Pit Bulls do not have special jaws and they do not have the highest bite strength.”

      What is your deal with strawmanning my comments? I said their jaws were very strong and capable of hurting or killing humans. This is true. From the harm that these dogs are capable of causing, I do not think they should be allowed to run around in society. Even if they have good owners. It's a simple harm reduction argument: balance the harm caused vs. the tiny amount of pleasure pit bull owners get.

      • Mehrunes_Laser [comrade/them, any]
        ·
        2 years ago

        German shepherds are more dangerous. They bite more people, can run faster, jump higher, and bite harder. It's simple harm reduction: balance the harm done by German shepherds vs the tiny amount of pleasure German Shepherd owners get.

        • Duckduck [none/use name]
          ·
          2 years ago

          Why shouldn't they be included in the same basket of deplorables as pit bulls? I swear, people just make up things they think I might have said and then attack me for what they made up. Very bad strawman arguments.

          • Mehrunes_Laser [comrade/them, any]
            ·
            2 years ago

            Uh pal, all anyone wanted you to do was admit that your criteria was bunk and pits are no worse than any other dog. Thank you for finally arriving where everyone wanted you in the first place. I don't care if we ban every single dog, all I wanted you to do was admit that the physical attributes you claimed as justification for the banning of pits also applied to essentially every dog.