The dogs that killed Borchart’s son were taken from their litter and mother way too early. That is known to cause major behavioural issues. They were also caged a good deal of the time and unused to children. Another cause of dangerous behavioural problems.
Borchardt’s child was killed by two ill-socialised, poorly managed and controlled dogs and a baby sitter who failed to keep the child in her care safe.
Children have tragically been killed by many breeds but the common factors are glaringly obvious – breed irrelevant.
Hey editor… you screwed up your headline. It’s bans of breed specific bans (eg. breed neutral laws) that are increasing, not breed specific bans, which are sharply declining.
Colleen Lynn, founder of DogsBite.org,
“Appellate courts agree with us. Doctors and surgeons agree with us. That is credibility right there,” Lynn said. “We also have the support of three divisions of the U.S. military, huge, massive bodies in the U.S. government.”
Why is this woman quoted in stories like this? She has no credentials whatsoever in the field of animal science or behavior. She’s just some person, who worked at one time as a telephone psychic as I understand it, who was bitten while jogging by a dog she considered to be a ‘pit bull’.
And her assertions are distortions and half truths, same as she pedals on her website. Which ‘doctors and surgeons’ support BSL, and what are their special qualifications to opine on that anyway? A few misguided court decisions have supported BSL, but most have been overturned. The US military puts many restrictions on its members which it’s not appropriate for government to put on the general public.
*No* actual animal scientific or veterinary organization supports BSL. Journalists shouldn’t fall into the trap of presenting ‘both sides’ when it causes them to quote cranks like Colleen Lynn as if ‘authorities’. It’s fine to report the fact BSL’s still exist in places, though the trend is clearly against BSL. But the article gives the impression there’s some reasoned argument by qualified people that BSL’s make any sense, and that’s simply not true.
“And because fatal pit bull attacks are a rarity compared with other causes of death such as auto accidents, dog advocates argue that breed-specific bans amount to legislative overkill.”
What is the ratio of pit bull interaction to car use?
There are more people killed in auto accidents than are murdered by drug dealers.
What was the point of that statement? Regardless of one’s position to granting non-discrimination rights (previously only for humans) to dogs, the statement about auto accidents was strange.
While so called ‘pit bulls’ are not nearly as common as cars, deaths related to cars are a staggering ratio of deaths related to dogs. Around 30,000 people are killed in the US annually by ~250 million cars, around 30 by ~80 million dogs.
Pinning down consistently what ‘pit bull’ means is one of the basic problems in the pro-BSL position. The amateur ‘statisticians’ in favor of BSL (no animal scientific or veterinary organization supports BSL) use media reports to identify the ‘breed’ of dog as ‘pit bull’ (though ‘pit bull’ is not a breed and it’s obvious when the media shows photo’s of actual dogs in bite incidents, rather than ‘file photo’ of ‘pit bull’, most of the dogs are mixed breed), then compare it to their estimate of the % of American Pit Bull Terriers in the US dog population, which they say is 5% (the % of dogs which would be dubbed ‘pit bull’ in a media article if they bit someone might be several time that high). But even taking this highly biased result at face value, and further assuming all dog related deaths are due to ‘pit bulls’, that’s still 12 annual deaths per 100k cars, .75 per 100k ‘pit bulls’.
And actually the ‘pit bill’ bite stats are worthless. Besides the breed definition/identification problem, there’s no control for how particular dogs are managed by humans. It’s like saying certain models of car are more likely to speed because they show up more in speeding ticket statistics, without considering who tends to buy them.
If dogs called ‘pit bulls’ are not *inherently* more inclined to injure people, independent of their owners’s actions (and no actual scientific evidence supports the contrary assertion), then BSL amounts to a collective punishment of all people who own ‘pit bulls’ just because irresponsible owner behavior is more common on average among ‘pit bull’ owners (a claim which might be supported by evidence, though still subject to the identification problem). Governments should not impose collective punishment, period. Insurance companies might, actually, get away with it.
Who cares how it relates to car related fatalities. That’s irrelevant. Since 2005 165 Americans have died from pitbul attacks. Do you think their families car about how many died in car wrecks? Terrible argument that has become indicative of the cult that is the Pitbull supporters. Blind to facts. Blind to reason.
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I believe there is an approach the industry can adopt that will greatly change how we underwrite family dogs.
The dogs that killed Borchart’s son were taken from their litter and mother way too early. That is known to cause major behavioural issues. They were also caged a good deal of the time and unused to children. Another cause of dangerous behavioural problems.
Borchardt’s child was killed by two ill-socialised, poorly managed and controlled dogs and a baby sitter who failed to keep the child in her care safe.
Children have tragically been killed by many breeds but the common factors are glaringly obvious – breed irrelevant.
Hey editor… you screwed up your headline. It’s bans of breed specific bans (eg. breed neutral laws) that are increasing, not breed specific bans, which are sharply declining.
Colleen Lynn, founder of DogsBite.org,
“Appellate courts agree with us. Doctors and surgeons agree with us. That is credibility right there,” Lynn said. “We also have the support of three divisions of the U.S. military, huge, massive bodies in the U.S. government.”
Why is this woman quoted in stories like this? She has no credentials whatsoever in the field of animal science or behavior. She’s just some person, who worked at one time as a telephone psychic as I understand it, who was bitten while jogging by a dog she considered to be a ‘pit bull’.
And her assertions are distortions and half truths, same as she pedals on her website. Which ‘doctors and surgeons’ support BSL, and what are their special qualifications to opine on that anyway? A few misguided court decisions have supported BSL, but most have been overturned. The US military puts many restrictions on its members which it’s not appropriate for government to put on the general public.
*No* actual animal scientific or veterinary organization supports BSL. Journalists shouldn’t fall into the trap of presenting ‘both sides’ when it causes them to quote cranks like Colleen Lynn as if ‘authorities’. It’s fine to report the fact BSL’s still exist in places, though the trend is clearly against BSL. But the article gives the impression there’s some reasoned argument by qualified people that BSL’s make any sense, and that’s simply not true.
Thank you for fixing the headline to accurately reflect the content of the article.
“And because fatal pit bull attacks are a rarity compared with other causes of death such as auto accidents, dog advocates argue that breed-specific bans amount to legislative overkill.”
What is the ratio of pit bull interaction to car use?
There are more people killed in auto accidents than are murdered by drug dealers.
What was the point of that statement? Regardless of one’s position to granting non-discrimination rights (previously only for humans) to dogs, the statement about auto accidents was strange.
While so called ‘pit bulls’ are not nearly as common as cars, deaths related to cars are a staggering ratio of deaths related to dogs. Around 30,000 people are killed in the US annually by ~250 million cars, around 30 by ~80 million dogs.
Pinning down consistently what ‘pit bull’ means is one of the basic problems in the pro-BSL position. The amateur ‘statisticians’ in favor of BSL (no animal scientific or veterinary organization supports BSL) use media reports to identify the ‘breed’ of dog as ‘pit bull’ (though ‘pit bull’ is not a breed and it’s obvious when the media shows photo’s of actual dogs in bite incidents, rather than ‘file photo’ of ‘pit bull’, most of the dogs are mixed breed), then compare it to their estimate of the % of American Pit Bull Terriers in the US dog population, which they say is 5% (the % of dogs which would be dubbed ‘pit bull’ in a media article if they bit someone might be several time that high). But even taking this highly biased result at face value, and further assuming all dog related deaths are due to ‘pit bulls’, that’s still 12 annual deaths per 100k cars, .75 per 100k ‘pit bulls’.
And actually the ‘pit bill’ bite stats are worthless. Besides the breed definition/identification problem, there’s no control for how particular dogs are managed by humans. It’s like saying certain models of car are more likely to speed because they show up more in speeding ticket statistics, without considering who tends to buy them.
If dogs called ‘pit bulls’ are not *inherently* more inclined to injure people, independent of their owners’s actions (and no actual scientific evidence supports the contrary assertion), then BSL amounts to a collective punishment of all people who own ‘pit bulls’ just because irresponsible owner behavior is more common on average among ‘pit bull’ owners (a claim which might be supported by evidence, though still subject to the identification problem). Governments should not impose collective punishment, period. Insurance companies might, actually, get away with it.
Except that you are wrong. There is no excuse to be willfully ignorant. The numbers of disfiguring maimings as deaths far out number any other dog.
Stop being allergic to facts and being a pit bull apologist.
Who cares how it relates to car related fatalities. That’s irrelevant. Since 2005 165 Americans have died from pitbul attacks. Do you think their families car about how many died in car wrecks? Terrible argument that has become indicative of the cult that is the Pitbull supporters. Blind to facts. Blind to reason.