this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2025
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Ban PitBulls
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Dog bite severity varies by the breed of dog, and studies have found that pit bull–type dogs have both a high rate of reported bites and a high rate of severe injuries, compared to other non–pit bull–type dogs.
Pit bull–type dogs are extensively used in the United States for dogfighting, a practice that has continued despite being outlawed. Several nations and jurisdictions restrict the ownership of pit bull–type dogs through breed-specific legislation.
Rules:
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Keep it civil.
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No advocating for violence.
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The sole goal for this comm is to ban pit bulls from every jurisdiction and to treat the remaining ones with respect while every caretaker follows the required safety precautions to keep everyone safe. Dog breeds with documented health issues should also be stopped from being forcibly bred into this world.
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No pit bull advocate gaslighting. Though good faith debates are allowed.
Links:
Dogsbite.org is routinely slandered by the pro-pit lobby, but the site is informative and its data collection procedures are transparent and well-documented.
Pit Nutter Bingo Cliched excuses and problematic arguments pit nutters use.
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Then you also have to consider the genetic background of breeds like German shepherds and Dobermann which were both bred as guard dogs. They have an instinct to protect their owner and attack strangers. Should they also be banned?
I mean their rates of attacks are much lower than the pitbulls.
Source
Both german shepherds and dobermanns dont even make up half the attacks pitbulls cause.
Conclusion from that same (25 year old) study:
Because of difficulties inherent in determining a dog's breed with certainty, enforcement of breed-specific ordinances raises constitutional and practical issues. Fatal attacks represent a small proportion of dog bite injuries to humans and, therefore, should not be the primary factor driving public policy concerning dangerous dogs. Many practical alternatives to breed-specific ordinances exist and hold promise for prevention of dog bites.These difficulties are easily addressed by genetic testing of dog breeds that’s commonplace today, but that requires forcing genetic testing of dogs that have attacked people, which I don’t believe is law anywhere at the moment.
Purposefully obscuring breed type is scientific malpractice, and often encouraged in forums on pitbull type dogs e.g. r/pitbulls. If you pay attention to this discourse, you will know there’s an intent to obscure these statistics.
CDC stats seem to be only general and one page of this 28 page report issue: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/pdfs/mm7236-H.pdf
More recent work generally supports this old data:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2018/09/13/americas-most-dangerous-dog-breeds-infographic/
https://www.palermolawgroup.com/blog/what-percentage-of-dog-attacks-are-pit-bulls?hs_amp=true
https://www.dogbitelaw.com/vicious-dogs-and-dangerous-dogs/pit-bulls-facts-and-figures/
Is that an instinct or a training thing? The previous comment was about nature vs nurture. To conclude anything about either from this chart is presumptuous. I'm honestly not even sure how to research it without doing horrible things to both dogs and people. Especially since owners are as likely to not know the signs of a stressed or aggressive animal as they are to accidentally train the same behaviors
Edit for follow-up question: How do these stats scale when normalized by the population of each breed? That would inform more about whether it's an instinct thing, whether owner culture contributes, or whether it's because there are so many of a given type of animal
That would increase the pitbulls standing.
I mean, I just want to see legitimate publicly funded research into this, rather than out of context graphs and personal opinions. The closest thing I could find is this study by Purdue, but I wouldn't say it's conclusive. Even in this, the data collection method is subject to owner bias to some degree and it's not an enormous data set.
Half the discourse is that pitbulls are gentle giants and it's due to poor or negligent training. Half the discourse is that they're aggressive and deadly because of what they are. I just want to remove the pathos and see the logos.
If you follow discourse on this subject, you will see an intent to obscure research into dog attacks and mislead reports on dog type from places like r/pitbull.
This question could be answered by genetic dog breed testing of dangerous dogs, but that’s not law anywhere IIRC. That Purdue study is, for lack of a better term, normalized aggression research on breeds which is valuable. They mention Dachschunds being high on multiple stats, but a Dachschunds ability to maul is very different from larger type dogs like German Shepards or Pitbulls.
People who argue “bad training” purposefully ignore the idea and influences of domestication, as a whole, and don’t mention genetically influenced behaviors from other animal species.
We should all be supporting research into dog types and general safety / behavior of these (generally) wonderful creatures that we domesticated and live with in close proximity.
Fair. I'm disappointed to see all the sensational pieces for and against different animals, but a lack of quality research.