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
are you agreeing with the second clause in that quote? cause that seems like a legitimate thing to be concerned about
I'm not sure how much stock to put into the reasons you've put forward for pitbull attacks being over reported
that pit bulls are a handful to care for and train doesn't seem like a good mitigation at all, neither does the fact that they are a group of breeds rather than a single breed. if that group of breeds is over represented in attacks vs it's population size then that seems irrelevant
I don't understand the relevance of the DNA bit
misidentifying a random dog that attacks someone and runs off is a reasonable problem to bring up and it's definitely likely that people could just make the assumption that a dog was a pit because they have a bad reputation. but from the little research I've just done dog breeds aren't recorded in cases where they can't make a positive identification & pits make up two thirds of positively identified dog attack fatalities
that pits are abused is also a fair thing to bring up, but i have no way of knowing to what extent pit attacks are made by previously abused dogs. that'd just be pure guessing
i don't think the post shows anything concretely but i think staffies are cute
Positively identified by whom? I provided sources that already refute this.
by the family who owned the dogs.
can you quote where your source disproves that please
Burden of proof is on existence. I already demonstrated that the reporting is skewed by misidentification. What family are you referring to? Just look at the damn source material.
Why are you so determined to argue that pit bulls are uniquely dangerous?
I listed several sources to back this up. Go ahead and dig into those if you want to learn more. I'm not going to respond to this anymore because you're giving off big concern troll vibes.
I'm not an expert on it i just googled some shit and what came up was that it's easier to make positive identification on fatal attacks because 1 they're taken more seriously by people investigating and 2 they almost always happen to people inside the same household as the dog. the owners of the dog probably know what breed it is imo
i don't think you've demonstrated anything concretely about misidentification, at least not to the point that it mitigates the pit bulls over representation in attacks satisfactorily
I've not argued that at any point
"read the sources" isn't a good response for a specific question and you know it, if you're making a claim that you've proved something and then say that no one is going to take it seriously.
not concern trolling, just carried on responding to people who have responded to me. probably for the best to stop now though. I agree
Read the sources I provided then.
this bit or another bit?
Okay we've worked through the very first paragraph here. Literally read the rest of the post jfc I already addressed all of this and if you doubt my statements you can actually read the sources instead of cherry picking shit I already debunked. Why do you hate pit bulls so much? Think about this.
Dude you give me the strongest "Though only making up 13% of the population, black people are responsible for 52% of the reported violent crime" vibes. Like holy shit
guy who turns up at the end of an argument and claims someone has vibes is one of the coolest guys to be online
Pal, we've already had our argument. I'm just here for the show now.