They are bread to fight and so they aren’t family pets. At least until we breed the instinct out of them again

You fuckers are really upvoting someone who spelled bred as “Bread”?

Haaaaahahahah

Y’all suck on this topic as much as Redditors do and that’s saying something.

I upvoted what they’re saying regardless of their spelling because I’m not a fuckhead who thinks an obvious spelling mistake obviates overwhelming statistical evidence that they’re correct.

Unrelated, but I saw an anti-Iran-war protest sign the other day that used the wrong form of “its”; suppose I’m pro-war now.

Pediatric dog bite injuries: a 5-year review of the experience at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia - PubMed

Pediatric dog bites are preventable injuries, yet they persist as a prevalent public health problem. Evaluation of data from high-volume tertiary pediatric health care institutions identifies predictable patterns of injury with respect to patient age and gender, animal breed, provocation, and season …

PubMed
A look at dog bite statistics over only 5 years in 1 city and they don’t even specify how those dog breeds are identified does not prove what you think it does.

A look at dog bite statistics over only 5 years in 1 city

Oh yeah, only 51% of all dog bite injuries for which a breed could be identified presenting to a large pediatric hospital over five years in the sixth-most populous city in the US is basically nothing. I’m sure pit bulls are just 51% or thereabouts of all dog ownership in Philadelphia anyway.

Meanwhile, I find it interesting you said: “they don’t even specify how those dog breeds are identified does not prove what you think it does.” (Cool blatant grammar mistake, by the way; enjoying your glass house?) Because all I gave you was the condensed version on PubMed. Crazy how you totally read the full methodology you didn’t have in like 30 seconds before dismissing it. The obvious and only answer, of course, was “the patients told the doctors”, you stupid fuck.

More than 30 different offending breeds were documented in the medical records. Unfortunately, these data were missing or not known in over half of the medical records (51.2 percent). Of the 269 cases for which a breed was indicated in the medical record, the majority of injuries were caused by pit bull terriers (50.9 percent), Rottweilers (8.9 percent), and mixed breeds involving at least one of the two aforementioned breeds (6.0 percent) (Table 1). Most patients were familiar with the dog involved in the attack (68.8 percent).

I can only imagine the 282 unidentified dogs were those vicious golden retrievers. They come out of nowhere, and they’re gone before you know what bit you. They’re fucking bloodthirsty, man.

One issue with studies like this is that people are really bad at identifying dog breeds, and that includes experts like veterinarians.

“Two ancillary findings, however, were that the second (F2) generation of the Cocker Spaniel–Basenji crosses took a “great variety of form and color” and that none of the 72 F2-generation puppies closely resembled either parental breed.”

“More recently, Voith et al compared, for dogs from multiple shelter locations, results of breed identification made on the basis of visual inspection alone with results of DNA analysis of breed. Although the number of dogs was small, the major breed determined on the basis of visual inspection matched the predominant breed identified by means of DNA analysis for only 25% of the dogs. This suggests that there is a high potential that results of visual identification of breed for shelter dogs of unknown lineage will differ from results of DNA analysis.”

So unless they identified them with breed papers or genetic testing, the breed identification is suspect at best. Not to say the results would be wrong, just that it needs more definitive study.

This is definitely the fairest point in favor of pit bulls. That being said, even rampant misidentification toward pit bulls wouldn’t be enough to offset 51% – a straight majority – of identified dogs being the perpetrators when 70% of victims knew the dog. At worst, assuming it somehow did, that would suggest “dogs that most people would perceive as pit bulls are more aggressive than other dogs not perceived as pit bulls”.

In fact, shelters have been found in areas with breed-specific legislation to intentionally misidentify them to make them more adoptable. I’d be totally unsurprised if that applies to places generally where there’s immense stigma around them.

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Counterpoint, people are more likely to pick a breed with a reputation for being aggressive if the dog acted aggressive.

And being familiar with the dog doesn’t improve that likelihood they know what the breed is by a whole lot. The only reason I knew what the breed of my last couple of dogs were is because of genetic testing. And one of them was half pit, and I would absolutely have never guessed. He was half pit, half golden retriever and looked nothing like either breed.

people are more likely to pick a breed with a reputation for being aggressive if the dog acted aggressive.

That’s why I pointed out that 70% knew the dog, because otherwise I’d agree. People can inadvertently imagine a lot of details recalling when they were attacked. Most of those 70% likely aren’t going to be changing their minds about what a dog they already know is because the dog bit them. “Now that I think about it, my neighbor’s Saint Bernard is strangely pit-like…”

That’s why I mentioned that I would have misidentified my own dogs if asked for their breed. There are lots of dogs with wide heads and muscular builds. And if people don’t know the breed, they will frequently just say its a pit because that’s what they are familiar with. Doesn’t mean it is true.

Again, I’m not saying the evidence is wrong, I just want much more stringent analysis and evidence in order to justify the hate and push to ban a subset of dogs.

Trying to pin down a DNA makeup to blame doesn’t really make sense when people who breed these pit bulls dogs that are colloquially recognized as pit bulls don’t really care about their DNA makeup.
If the genetics don’t matter, then on what basis would you ban the breed? If they aren’t breed conformant, then there is no basis to say they are genetically more predisposed to aggression than any other dog. The paper I posted earlier even says that mixing two breeds results in temperaments and behaviors unlike those of the parents and their distinct breeds.