I'd rather confront a pit bull than some other bigger bader dogs, infact a pitbull is a poodle when it comes to a Rotty
So you'd ban most, if not all dogs on safety grounds? I have a better idea, you go live in an ivory tower, out of harm's way instead. A padded one of course, for safety.
People shouldn't keep vicious dogs, they are an accident waiting to happen. Having a dog that needs to be locked away, or leashed all of the time because it would be dangerous if it gets loose is being too optimistic with the level of control you can exercise. Take this story; http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/leicestershire/5376788.stm The owners went on holiday, and the people looking after the place left a door open. The dogs were usally confined to a roof area, but got back into the building, and ripped a baby to pieces. Nobody is perfect, and accidents will happen if you keep vicious dogs. The breed doesn't matter, it's the attitude of the owners that matters.
You fail to qualify Pit Bulls as a vicious dog. They aren't - according to the organizations that label breeds as dangerous or not. In fact, they are slightly safer than most dogs according to the research presented previously. You ought to look at that. But yes, vicious dogs of any breed, if known to be such, should be carefully handled.
A pit bull lives near my house, he barks every time I walk by(the ass hole). But just down the street is a real terrorist, a 200lbs formidable Rottweiller, he's bark alone sends shivers down my brain, even though I pretend to be a man when I walk pass him. According to Pit bulls they know you can out-manuever them, but as far as Rottys are concerned you are red meat.
The problem with approaching an issue this way is that democracy will degenerate into pure majoritarianism. Politics at its ugliest, people voting their own selfish interests even if it's not best for the community, or even just to spite someone they don't like. People end up having only the rights that 51% of the voters grant them. This is how we get laws permitting discrimination on the basis of race, religion, sexual orientation, etc. Any group of people with an unpopular faith, skin color or hobby can be persecuted by the people who don't like it. If you bear in mind that the average IQ is only 100 and these are the people who put a Religious Redneck Retard in the White House, it's obvious that trying to resolve social problems by popular vote is a horrifying idea. Voting selfishly does not equate to voting for a viable civilization.
Valich: You are raving. Your last post makes me wonder if you were conditioned by one of the nuts who train psychotic Pit Bulls. Others: Those who are in favor of banning Pit Bulls probably never owned a dog and seem to know little, if anything, about dogs. Dogs are incredibly easy to train, especially if you start when they are young. You can make almost any large dog vicious if that is the type of dog you want. It is easier to train Pit Bulls, Dobermans, Rotweillers, German Shepherds, and various other breeds to be fighting and/or attack dogs. It is difficult to train Golden Retrievers, Saint Bernards, et cetera to be vicious. You can also train almost any dog to be friendly and docile. Only the gentlest types of dogs can be trained to tolerate abuse from strangers, but even a Pit Bull can be trained to behave in the absence of provocatiion. I have owned a lot of dogs (mostly German Shepherds). I admit that I would not trust any large dog enough to allow him to roam free among strangers. This is due to knowing that many people do not know how to act in the presence of a large dog. When I was young, I lived in a rual area where dogs of all types were allowed to roam. Nobody ever got bitten because rural people are used to dealing with animals. It makes sense to have laws requiring dogs to be kept on leashes or in enclosed yards. What you need is legislation relating to the behavior of the owners. If you want to ban vicious dogs, pass laws relating to the training and owning of such dogs. You could slaughter all the Pit Bulls in the workd and the psycho types who want such animals would train some other breed to be vicious fighting and/or attack dogs. It might even get worse if you bann Pit Bulls. The jerks might start getting breeders to cross a Saint Bernard or a Great Dane with a Wolf and then train the offspring to be an attack dog. BTW: I have heard that dogs can sense adrenalin, which is relased in the blood stream when a person is either afraid or angry enough to attack. I do not know if this is a valid belief. If true, it would explain why a lot of people who are afraid of dogs are bitten by dogs which are normally friendly. The dog misinterprets the fear as anger indicating an imminent attack.
That is what a ban is supposed to do. With the ownership banned, the owner is responsible, not the dog. What therefore is the implied proposition supposed to be, a dictatorship run by Fraggle Rocker?
Hardly. Constitutional, representative democracy is the best system anyone's come up with so far. The states that allow a bare majority of the voters to enact legislation directly, such as through the initiative process, are often textbook examples of the Tyranny of the Majority. Thirty years ago California voters froze property taxes without changing the capricious way the money is distributed and as a result the state keeps bogarting more of the money, leaving the cities and counties without enough to even fill the potholes in their roads. This year voters in many states passed laws to outlaw gay marriage, which is nothing but discrimination against an unpopular minority by the always mean-spirited children of Abraham.
If you havent heard: http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.asp...aking_news/breaking_news__international_news/ Thats pretty messed up.
Obviously, some here need to improve their reading skills. I wrote "if ... negative sum" which is exactly what I meant, except for what I'd already written before. N.B. "if". What the sum is or would be is another matter. One good argument for allowing is the same as with tobacco, it helps at least to identify the malignant numskulls one needs to steer well clear of. The more repulsive they are to me the better off I am apart in the ivory tower, better that than their sewer.
Pit bulls are vicious dogs and are labelled as such as a "dangerous animal." This is what were fighting for now at the federal level rather than just the local or state level. And this is why the American Kennel Club (AKC) refuses to even recognize them as a breed. You can't legally transport a loaded gun in your car without a permit. How do you remove the razor sharp locking jaws of a pit bull while in transit so the public is safe. You cannot say that a pit bull is safe just because it is on a leash. Pity the curiousity of the innocent passerbyer little kid who just has a natural inclination to want to pet it - chomp!
.. and I wrote "you'd", a contraction for "you would", not "you will", or "you want to". "you would" relies on that if , so check your own comprehension, grammar boy.
My dear child, I am not a boy and I read well enough to know a leading question when I see one. Your question was impertinent. My personal preference was not the subject of the thread, nor do I see why it should be.
It wasn't a leading question, but an attempt to clarfiy your position, and then to demonstrate that is your position was as I thought it to be, that it would do no good. Jesus christ, if your opinions aren't to be considered, why bother posting?
Pit bulls are especially dangerous because they are a cross between muscle and tenacity( bulldog and terriers). Terriers without any muscle are already half lunatics, just look at my favorite terrier; Jack Russel. Pit bulls are a like a teen on dangerous drugs and alchohol, a volatile combo to say the least. However, all dogs have the capacity to go on a human flesh frenzy, especially without proper observation and training.
They should be more concerned about the enforceability. A ban was introduced in the UK and a great deal of controversy followed. On the one hand it gives the police the power to intervene when need be. On the other it brings the law into disrepute; while the good guys play along those you'd want to keep on leash carry on regardless, willing to bite back like the dogs when they feel offended, with more trouble caused than they'd aimed to put a stop to.
There's a vast amount of misinformation and propaganda on this thread. Very few of the people who are answering questions instead of asking them have impartial viewpoints. It would behoove you all to read the Wikipedia article on pit bulls. It's a collection of writings by a number of different people so there's no overall bias. Many of them contradict each other, but still most of them cite reasonably authoritative sources. Despite the inevitable rants, there's far more objective information there than there is here. One of the interesting tidbits: The rules for dogfighting in England (before it was outlawed 170 years ago) required that the referee be able to pick up any dog while it was engaged in fighting, lift it out of the ring, and hand it to its owner. Any dog that bit the referee would be killed (I would guess probably by the referee on the spot). Fighting dogs typically lived as pets in the homes of their owners' families, generally gamblers. Clearly these dogs by nature did not have an instinct to harm humans. It's also clear that these dogs have been around in numbers for a couple of centuries, yet it's only recently that complaints about their temperament toward humans have become common. This could be because they have lately been specifically bred and crossbred for this temperament (the American pit bull terrier is a stabilized hybrid of several established breeds), or because people who want scary dogs have lately begun to choose this breed for its looks or cachet (they do have those eerie psychopath eyes) and train (or abuse) the individuals to make them mean. Probably both. Whichever explanation holds, the root cause for the existence of the specific individuals of the type that are causing the trouble (a small percentage by any standard) is that there are lately a noticeable number of people who want them. Have we learned nothing from humanity's consistently and disastrously failed experiments with laws against alcohol, prostitution, communism, capitalism, contraception, specific religions, drugs, dancing, emigration, immigration, abortion, inter-racial marriage, etc.? When people want something, someone will find a way to provide it. It's a no-brainer that even if pit bulls are made unavailable (yeah right, just like alcohol and marijuana), as long as this demand exists it will be satisfied by other breeds. A far more interesting question (with a far more important answer) than the title of this thread is: Why do so many people suddenly desire to keep vicious dogs?
