Time to Ban Owning Pit Bulls?

[Berzerker]

Watch in glee given how morally repugnant I am, of course.

Obviously you should intervene if someone is being attacked. That is not the zinger you think it is.

The 'zinger' is you waited for the kid to be attacked and chastised me for not waiting, as if thats a zinger. I'm glad you'll be jumping in to defend the kid, hopefully your delay wasn't too late.

 

[Synobun]

The 'zinger' is you waited for the kid to be attacked and chastised me for not waiting, as if thats a zinger. I'm glad you'll be jumping in to defend the kid, hopefully your delay wasn't too late.

Dogs intent on attack are noticeable before they lunge. You should know this given your self-described years of experience dealing with dogs. What you haven't expressed throughout this hypothetical of yours is an awareness of whether or not a dog is hostile. Your only criteria for arming yourself and intervention is the sighting of an unleashed dog.

 

[sophie]

Of course, science has looked at whether that is true of pit bulls, and it isn't.

I quoted the exact same study at them. Also the study that disputed the study that they’re quoting. They’ll just ignore both of them.

 

[metatron]

, which is made even easier since technically there is no such breed. Staffordshire Terrier? That's what most people are referring to when they say pit bull, but there are at least a half dozen breeds that are frequently referred to as pit bulls.

This is not complicated and you know it.
Four breeds: Staffordshire, American Staffordshire, American Bully, American Bull Terrier.
Plus mutts that appear close enough.
Plus, since we are zealots, we'll be back for the dobermanns and a bunch of other nonsense.
This is not complicated at all. Misapplication of the concept of "breed" for obfuscations sake shall not be convincing.

All well and good until someone's definition of threat can be summarized as "merely existing". You'll note that nobody here has advocated for dogs to simply be allowed to maul people or eat hapless children alive.

Not merely existing.
I suppose the matter really is "being around". Or more precisely "being around in the custody of anybody who volunteers".
A certain number of parallels can be drawn to gun ownership.

Of course, science has looked at whether that is true of pit bulls, and it isn't.

Faux science this faux science that.
The fact remains that there is intent. Pit bulls were bread deliberately as dogs for personal protection, war, back street combat and the hunt.
Any contrary "prove" from shaky, partisan datasets - profiting from reporting biases - you can come up with will have to sound rather hollow.

I don't know, do they need to have a reason for preferring that type of dog? You're still working with very low numbers of attacks statistically.

Would you also outlaw sports cars because statistically, they are more often involved in accidents?

This is a dubiouis analogy.
For one you need a citation. Cause i would have thought the most accident prone car - here - would have been a modded Golf, on account of the driver population.

Once you have that you face the problem that a car going fast is at the very least morally neutral if not an outright good. That is what the car is designed to do. It's worthwhile. Accidents are a result of misapplication.
Pit bulls (and to varying degree other dogs) are purposefully and deliberatly bread to be fighting dogs, war dogs, hunting dogs etc.
To be harmfully dangerous is the very purpose of their existance.

Intent matters.

All the breeds we have in the loop here beyond pit bulls (with the exception of huskies) are from the late 19th/early 20th century and from Imperial Britain or from the Second Empire.
This is not a coincidence. These dogs are means of violence made by violent humans in a violent time.
We may as well push the chips in the middle here, with me - roughly - quoting the opening remark of Jeff Rosen's Ted Talk:

"I asked my father why we didn't have a dog and he said 'because they used hunds on us'."​

This is what these dogs were made for.

They are disgusting and repulsive, they create a chilling effect accross entire neighborhoods, no matter how many or few people they bite.
They should be sharply regulated, punitively taxed and one should be required to have a hard-to-get and expensive license to have one.

 

[Berzerker]

Your source not being a study, for one. That yours is using two years of more recent news stories doesn't really counteract the ever present issue of news reports not being a reliable metric for accurate information regarding dog attacks, especially when your "study" provides fear-mongering numbers and sad stories about innocent victims, pictures of their faces and all.

Whew, look at that scientific rigor.

Yeah, they even have photos of the victims. Quite compelling... I didn't even scroll down to see them, I just read the stats I quoted. What exactly is your complaint? The dogs responsible weren't really pit bulls because news reports are unreliable?

 

[Berzerker]

All well and good until someone's definition of threat can be summarized as "merely existing". You'll note that nobody here has advocated for dogs to simply be allowed to maul people or eat hapless children alive.

You said I shouldn't approach the kid to deter the dogs

 

[Ryika]

For one you need a citation. Cause i would have thought the most accident prone car - here - would have been a modded Golf, on account of the driver population.

I have no idea what cars cause the most accidents, it was just a random "what if"-statement.

Once you have that you face the problem that a car going fast is at the very least morally neutral if not an outright good. That is what the car is designed to do. It's worthwhile. Accidents are a result of misapplication.
Pit bulls (and to varying degree other dogs) are purposefully and deliberatly bread to be fighting dogs, war dogs, hunting dogs etc.
To be harmfully dangerous is the very purpose of their existance.

Intent matters.

All the breeds we have in the loop here beyond pit bulls (with the exception of huskies) are from the late 19th/early 20th century and from Imperial Britain or from the Second Empire.
This is not a coincidence. These dogs are means of violence made by violent humans in a violent time.
We may as well push the chips in the middle here, with me - roughly - quoting the opening remark of Jeff Rosen's Ted Talk:

"I asked my father why we didn't have a dog and he said 'because they used hunds on us'."
This is what these dogs were made for.

That's utter horse dung of course. Whatever Pit Bulls were bread for originally, most people now see them as pets.

Swords were purposefully and deliberately forged to be weapons with which you can kill your opponents. Today, most swords are not used to kill your opponents, but rather as prestige objects that you put on your wall.
Should they be outlawed because the original intent was to be weapon that kills people, even though statistically swords are hardly ever used as a murder weapon?

Such a terrible argument.

They are disgusting and repulsive, they create a chilling effect accross entire neighborhoods, no matter how many or few people they bite.
They should be sharply regulated, punitively taxed and one should be required to have a hard-to-get and expensive license to have one.

Well see, I'd be prone to entertaining that argument, but why exactly should it be "hard-to-get and expensive"? Would it not make more sense to make sure a person who wants such a license has the skill and knowledge required to handle the dog, instead of these things that are just meant to reduce the numbers of dogs that exist?

 

[metatron]

That's utter horse dung of course. Whatever Pit Bulls were bread for originally, most people now see them as pets.

Well, some people don't.
I don't.
Mr. Rosen doesn't.
And we're entirely justified in our view.

Swords were purposefully and deliberately forged to be weapons with which you can kill your opponents. Today, most swords are not used to kill your opponents, but rather as prestige objects that you put on your wall.
Should they be outlawed because the original intent was to be weapon that kills people, even though statistically swords are hardly ever used as a murder weapon?

Such a terrible argument.

Yeah, but there isn't this semi-random trickle of rando street thugs assaulting people with their swords, rando street thugs loosing control or surveillence of their swords and their swords accidentally stabbing people, and middle class blowhards suffering from penile under-equipment insisting on having the butt-uglyest-dysfunctional-annoying swords so as to maximally troll the neighborhood for the sake of their machismo.

So, i'm affraid the analogy is, again, lackluster.

Never mind that swords of any length that would warrant usage of the term are basically entirely banned alltogether (to appear in public anyway) where you and i live.

 

[Ryika]

Well, some people don't.
I don't.
Mr. Rosen doesn't.
And we're entirely justified in our view.

Sure, but your view is of no relevance to the context in which I made my response, which was your claim that pit bulls are dogs that are "bred to be fighting dogs" etc., and that this original intent somehow is of any importance by itself, that something "is bad" because the original creators created it to "be bad". I completely reject that notion, whether something is "good" or "bad" completely depends on what it actually does. Statistically, most pit bulls never attack anyone, so there's that. It's a non-argument.

Yeah, but there isn't this semi-random trickle of rando street thugs assaulting people with their swords, rando street thugs loosing control or surveillence of their swords and their swords accidentally stabbing people, and middle class blowhards suffering from penile under-equipment insisting on having the butt-uglyest-dysfunctional-annoying swords so as to maximally troll the neighborhood for the sake of their machismo.

So, i'm affraid the analogy is, again, lackluster.

We already established that pit bull attacks are neither particularly common, nor a statistically significant cause of death.
For every person killed by a pit bull in the USA, roughly 200 are killed with knifes and other cutting objects.

Never mind that swords of any length that would warrant usage of the term are basically entirely banned alltogether (to appear in public anyway) where you and i live.

Which of course also has no relevance to the question. Swords are legal to own, and if you're a psychopath you can use them to go outside and go on a rampage, and they have no practical application to justify their existence (unlike knifes for example). So by the appeal to consequences, and given that they were "created to kill", we should outlaw them completely.

 

[Berzerker]

This is not what the evidence says.

While pit bull-type dogs are more frequently identified with cases involving very severe injuries or fatalities than other breeds, the review suggests this may relate to the popularity of the breed

Well, did their study compare the rate of attacks with their popularity? The 2016 study posted on pg1 said they're %6 of the dogs and responsible for 22 of 31 fatalities.

In a 2000 review by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which examines data from both media reports and from The Humane Society of the United States, pit bull-type dogs were identified in approximately one-third of dog bite-related fatalities in the United States between 1981 and 1992. However, the review notes that studies on dog bite-related fatalities which collect information by surveying news reports are subject to potential errors, as some fatal attacks may not have been reported, a study might not find all relevant news reports, and the dog breed might be misidentified.[30] The AVMA has also noted fundamental problems with tracking breed in dog bite-related fatalities.[31] In a 2013 study of 256 fatalities in the United States from 2000–2009, the AVMA determined that valid breed determination was possible for only 17.6% of cases.[32]

In other words, your facts are wrong. You're proposing banning them based on nothing more than a negative stereotype.

I should have asked this before, but what was the determination for the 17.6%? All these other studies claim pit bulls are more responsible, I dont see any evidence refuting them. Just some argument about under reporting and possible media errors. Its certainly possible some of these dogs were misidentified, some were probably pit bull mixes. I wonder why they killed people, the mix or the pit bull... Given the lethality of pit bulls I'd say the mix didn't make them deadlier.

 

[Berzerker]

Dogs intent on attack are noticeable before they lunge. You should know this given your self-described years of experience dealing with dogs. What you haven't expressed throughout this hypothetical of yours is an awareness of whether or not a dog is hostile. Your only criteria for arming yourself and intervention is the sighting of an unleashed dog.

Two pit bulls on the loose... I dont know if they're hostile, I'm not waiting to find out. I'm getting closer in case they are. And you criticized that, you said I was the greater threat to the kid. That was your zinger.

I quoted the exact same study at them. Also the study that disputed the study that they’re quoting. They’ll just ignore both of them.

The 2014 study doesn't refute the 2016 data - it doesn't refute any data from what I could see - but I didn't see a 2nd study refuting it, what post was it in?

 

[metatron]

Swords are legal to own, and if you're a psychopath you can use them to go outside and go on a rampage, and they have no practical application to justify their existence (unlike knifes for example). So by the appeal to consequences, and given that they were "created to kill", we should outlaw them completely.

Swords are not "legal" largely not to keep either, and you have just in your own words proven my point and justified my position.

Here, have a look:
https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/waffg_2002/BJNR397010002.html

No, you very much can't have a sword, not a functioning one anyway.

Ok, admittedly. You can have a decorative sword. Long dull metal thingy. That's still a dangerous weapon of sorts. Sure.
But please tell that's not the straw that the dogs you seek to defend have to cling to.
Please tell me we are not at "madman bludgeoning to death people with a dull piece of decoration".

 

[Ryika]

Swords are not "legal" largely not to keep either, and you have just in your own words proven my point and justified my position.

Here, have a look:
https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/waffg_2002/BJNR397010002.html

No, you very much can't have a sword, not a functioning one anyway.

It's always fun to link a block of text that then hopefully makes your case for you, but... yeah, I had already read through the laws before I even made that comparison. I interpret nothing I read there as a declaration that the ownership of swords is outlawed in Germany, so could you be a bit more precise about what part of that text block you _think_ outlaws the ownership of swords? Because the way I interpret the text is that ownership of swords is legal if you're 18+, the carrying of such a weapon is not.

That's in line with pretty much any source I found via google.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Comparing a human to a dog is pretty insulting.

And yet in this case so appropriate. Some "pit bulls" have caused injuries and even deaths, so your reaction is "kill them all!!!!" And yet when it is pointed out that your fellow humans have also caused injuries and even deaths so your claim of "but *I* wouldn't" is comparably suspect you take offense.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Would you support any restraints on pit bulls roaming neighborhoods?

Not in yours.

And you think I'm a troll?

Fishing for something here?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Dogs intent on attack are noticeable before they lunge. You should know this given your self-described years of experience dealing with dogs. What you haven't expressed throughout this hypothetical of yours is an awareness of whether or not a dog is hostile. Your only criteria for arming yourself and intervention is the sighting of an unleashed dog.

It seems extremely likely that his "years of experience" are the product of passing dogs while emitting all the signals of morbid fear, which would make every unleashed dog react to him as prey. Rabbits see what rabbits see, but that doesn't really bear on the world we live in.

 

[Kyriakos]

And yet in this case so appropriate. Some "pit bulls" have caused injuries and even deaths, so your reaction is "kill them all!!!!" And yet when it is pointed out that your fellow humans have also caused injuries and even deaths so your claim of "but *I* wouldn't" is comparably suspect you take offense.

By your logic, people should go to jail for murder because they stepped on ants. Dogs aren't humans, and they certainly do not have comparable rights, nor would it be anything other than insane to ask that they do.
Furthermore, just because you, personally, don't run a risk of being attacked by dogs, it doesn't mean that kids do not. There are stories of that every year, usually with very serious injuries, losing eyes, fingers, or dieing. All that due to keeping an animal as a pet when it has shown time and again that it is too agresive to be kept as a pet.

 

[Ryika]

By your logic, people should go to jail for murder because they stepped on ants. Dogs aren't humans, and they certainly do not have comparable rights, nor would it be anything other than insane to ask that they do.
Furthermore, just because you, personally, don't run a risk of being attacked by dogs, it doesn't mean that kids do not. There are stories of that every year, usually with very serious injuries, losing eyes, fingers, or dieing. All that due to keeping an animal as a pet when it has shown time and again that it is too agresive to be kept as a pet.

There are cats that have killed babies. So let's kill all cats? Not that I'd necessarily be against that one, maybe the world is better off without cats, in fact, I think that's almost undeniable.

 

[Kyriakos]

There are cats that have killed babies. So let's kill all cats? Not that I'd necessarily be against that one, maybe the world is better off without cats, in fact, I think that's almost undeniable.

Maybe the chinese are wiser

 

[Ryika]

Certainly. There's a reason why Ancient Egypt fell, and opposite to popular belief, it wasn't because of Rome, but Mau decadence.