Highlights: In a bizarre turn of events last month, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced that he would ban American XL bullies, a type of pit bull-shaped dog that had recently been implicated in a number of violent and sometimes deadly attacks.
XL bullies are perceived to be dangerous — but is that really rooted in reality?
The statistics aren’t conclusive at all.
In over half of dog related injuries the breed is not reporter.
Add to that, even vet staff cannot visually identify dog breed with any level of accuracy.
And when you talk about banning dog breeds, yes you are talking about rounding them up in euthanizing them. Period.
I’m absolutely not. I’m advocating restrictions on breeders, not owners. No one should have their dog taken away, and pit bulls in shelters should still be adoptable in my view. I just don’t believe we should be deliberately breeding more dogs with known issues, whether it’s issues with their own health (like pugs) or issues with aggression.
Please don’t presume to tell me what I’m advocating.
You are though.
You realize dogs have all the equipment to breed without any human interaction right?
So pitbulls will still breed even if you tell people not to do it.
How do you come up with pitbulls having health and aggression issues? In over half of all dog bite cases, the breed is unknown. It’s not anyone’s job to count dog bites by breed, so anyone purporting to have done so is basically lying.
I’m not, reread my previous comment. Last time I’m going to say this before I just block you without giving you the courtesy of even replying, stop deciding for me what I’m advocating, I’ve laid out the strategy I’d like to see in my previous comment, I’m advocating for absolutely no action beyond that.
Yes, of course - do you actually believe this is where a majority of pitbulls come from though? No moral strategy will completely eliminate the breed, but restricting breeders will mean that your average person can’t get one, which means your average Joe/Jane is far less likely to run into them on the street.
I never said they have health issues (maybe they do, I’m not aware of it though) - When I talk about breeds with health issues, I’m referring to breeds like Pugs that live their whole lives in discomfort because of how much we fucked up their physiology.
True, that’s why we only look at the cases where the breed is known for these discussions, without making any assumptions about the dogs whose breed is unknown.
I guess true? In that people don’t get paid, they do however report breed information as part of the reporting of the dog bite. And as I’ve said in other comments in this thread, I’m entirely sure that there is a margin of error in the reporting of breeds for dog bites. However, even if you assume as much as a 5x overreporting for pitbulls, that still puts at about double the chance of an individual pitbull biting someone as opposed to a mixed breed dog.
Ah, the ole “I don’t like it, so it must be made up”, very scientific.