Not really. I'm quite sure someone could bore me with the gory details of every one of the 17,000 or so injuries and 30 fatalities caused by elevators and escalators every year, too.

You're making a common mistake.

It tells me that you have nothing better to do than to dredge up more proof that the staff of The Stranger is frustratingly classist, and keen on focusing on issues of little relative importance.

(Dauchshund mutilates genitals of sleeping child)

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-dog_bite_bothnov06,0,657910.story

"...chewed through the child's dirty diaper"

"...dachshund owned by his father's girlfriend mutilated and ingested his genitals"

I always knew there was something wrong with those dogs.

More starch, less dogs!

Yes. It reminds me that the plural of anecdote is not data.

Yes, it tells me that the media spend too much time writing about pit bulls and not enough time writing about the 42,443 people killled annually in motor vehicle accidents in the US.

You people are fucking lame.

Whenever you stab a pitbull, unopened 24oz cans of Colt .45 fall out pinata style.

Every time a pitbull is stabbed, Eric Powers has to blow a Reggaeton artist.

If you were to interview people off the street and ask what the associations people had with pit bulls, I'd consider it very unusual if there weren't clear associations between dogs and social class / ethnicity in their perceptions.

You can make the argument, of course, that a threat to public safety is a threat to public safety, regardless of the source. Still, the odds of being killed by *any* dog in one's lifetime are about 1 in 140,000 (2004). Compare that with being killed by lightning (1 in 82,000), bee sting (1 in 72,000), or a fall from a ladder (1 in 10,000).

Regardless of what you might think, there's a fundamental difference between the actual risk and the perception of risk here, and to me, this is primarily because of social status.

Mad props.

I live in a minority neighborhood where there are pitbulls in almost every house--including mine. People (like Gomez) need to get over themselves. We dont' have a problem with Crips or pitbulls. The problem we have is people coming into our neighborhood looking to buy drugs. Thank G-d the pitbulls scare them away.