Comments on Today's Pit Bull Slog Post
I think they had a story on the news recently that said shelters were simply putting pit bulls down in favor of more adoptable breeds since they can't trust the behavior/temperment of rescue animals. I can't remember which channel/location though.
Dang. Read all the way to the end of that post and never found any mention of proof that pit bull bans accomplish diddly squat.
How come you want do repeal pointless drug laws but enact a pointless breed ban, Mr. Savage?
The Times article is ridiculous - as if the dogs are choosing to give blood, rather than their owners making them give blood as a PR move. Does the author really think that any of these dogs looked up at its owner and said "I wanna give blood" in that "I ruv you" dog voice?
I don't think that Pit Bulls should be banned ... I think banning things is always a bad idea (look at the problems with pot, etc ...)
what I do think is that when you own an animal or a gun or any other device that can kill someone else, that the authorities should be able to levy much harsher fines and punishment.
someone getting killed accidentally by a dog is no better/worse than by a gun or a car.
There has to be some level of personal responsibility when you own something that can cause fatal injuries.
Maybe you'd be required to have dog insurance to cover medical costs of anyone injured ... or something like that.
Commit a crime, just like felons can't own guns ... they shouldn't be able to own pit bulls either
etc ... etc ...
I think y'all get what I'm trying to say
"From what I'm seeing, we need to focus on dog attacks as a whole," said Councilman Ryan Frazier. "If all of the city's resources are focused on certain breeds, then what about the other dogs behaving badly?"[...]Bites by pit bulls and other restricted breeds have fallen some years and climbed others, and the number of overall dog bites is up in some places[...] "Can I sit here and say because of our ban the number of pit bull bites or incidents are down?" said police Detective Mike Sanders "No. I don't have clear documentation to say that."[...]Karen Delise, a veterinarian who has written two books on fatal dog attacks, says breeding, neglect and abuse, environmental stresses, genetics and irresponsible owners can create aggressive dogs. She believes media reporting is biased against pit bulls.Thank you, Mr. Savage. That settles it as far as I'm concerned. Let's ban something! Let's ban the color green! Or beards! Let's ban fixies and then Seattle can have dog attacks rise in some years and fall in others! Yay!
Those motherfuckers should be charged with manslaughter, not for "letting dangerous dogs run loose." Christ.
We'll certainly never have a ban until the authorities start taking needless deaths seriously.
elenchos, do you have a pit bull?
Pit bulls, like cats and children, react to people according to how they were raised. I have a few permanent scars from getting bit by a fuckin' BEAGLE! So should we ban beagles, too?
More people in Seattle are killed by cops each year than by pit bulls. I know what I would like to ban...
@8
No, I don't have a pit bull. And my wife says we're never getting one. I'm just anti-idiot, that's all.
Plus, if we put resources into something that does actually work, namely animal control staffing, animal shelter quality improvements, and an effective spaying/neutering program for all dogs, we can reduce attacks and reduce euthanasia.
Did anyone see in The Wire how the newspaper was desperate to get some legislation passed in response to their series of investigative reports? Because that's how you win a Pulitzer? Well, that's why so many media outlets jump on the pit bull ban bandwagon. Getting funding for animal control doesn't bleed like a good pit bull attack story.
I don't agree with breed bans, but the pit bull supporters should aggressively promote muzzles, pay for insurance, and stop denying the unique damage these dogs can do.
To ignore the potential damage a pit bull or most any large breeds can do (regardless of training/temperment/ect...) REQUIRES owners to muzzle these dogs in public. I'd rather read stories of muzzle pit bulls being killed by other dogs than another damn story of a good dog who snapped and attacked a another animal/human.
Escapes from a yard will happen, but as a pit owner you should expect to have insurance and be willing to go out of your way to create a better breed of dog. They can be amazingly sweet, but to ignore the potential of these dogs to inflict harm is irresponsible.
I watched first hand what these balls of muscle can do and it's awful to see and it is unique in the damage they can inflict.
And yes, I've read the book, The Culture of Fear (the data on pit bulls is not solely tied to frequency of reported attacks).
The top six U.S. male serial killers were all gay:
• Donald Harvey claimed 37 victims in Kentucky;
• John Wayne Gacy raped and killed 33 boys in Chicago, burying them under his house and in his yard;
• Patrick Kearney accounted for 32, cutting his victims into small pieces after sex and leaving them in trash bags along the Los Angeles freeways;
• Bruce Davis molested and killed 27 young men and boys in Illinois;
• A gay sex-murder-torture ring (Corll-Henley-Brooks) sent 27 Texas men and boys to their grave; and
• Juan Corona was convicted of murdering 25 migrant workers (he "made love" with their corpses).
@13,
The top six, and yet I've only heard of one of them. So what's the percentage of serial killers who are men, gay or straight? 99 percent?
My dear friend elenchos:
Your logic on pit bulls is wrong.
They bite more, proportionately, than other breeds. Lots more. Their bites are more severe, proportionately, than those of other breed. Lots more severe. They do seem to attack the vulnerable, and to do so suddenly with no warning, a lot more than other breeds.
You proposed solution of tputting dollars into "animal control staffing, animal shelter quality improvements, and an effective spaying/neutering program for all dogs," seemingly would tax us non dog owners for the risks of the nasty dogs. And tax owners of kinder breed for risks of pit bulls.
How about making the owner liable for homicide in any case in which a pit bull attack led to death? Hmmm? That would be a cheaper, and more effective, use of "resources."
But anyway the regulation and education approach doesn't fully work.
As to bans, we ban murder but still there are murders. So just because the ban doesn't work 100%, is no reason not to have one.
The point with drug laws is there's little harm there in the first place, compared to the harm inflicted by having the drug laws. The cost. The black market skyrocket profits. The burning and killing of innocent witnesses. The corruption of Columbia and Mexico and now our own border agents. The racist impact.
Most bans work fairly well. We ban parents doing nothing to educate their kids. We ban assaults, rape, murder etc. We ban many animals on the grounds they are deemed "wild" (like deer) or dangerous (like tigers).
In fact we ban wolves, too.
So we can fucking ban pit bulls.
And one word in response from you that's not rational argument, you become "Pitbullelenchos" forevermore.
Unity against killer-dogs, y'all--
"higher enforcement standards,
Effective as in mandatory? As in, a ban on non-neutered pit bulls? And steep fines for violators?
And if we know that leaving pits chained up in yards is bad, how about a one-strike-your-out law? Chain up your pit in an empty yard, lose your dog?
The problem with some gay men, obviously, is how they're raised. Punish the, er, breeders, not the deeders. Or is it the other way around?
And we were *so* after a Pulitzer, elenchos. You got us.
I actually started posting these things after one or two attacks made Slog—Schmader put 'em up—and we got lectured, furiously, by angry pit bull fanciers about what lovable little cuddle monsters pit bulls really are, and fuck you people for even taking passing note of a pit bull attack, and yadda yadda yadda. Those idiots pissed me off, and so now we take note of those pit bull attacks.
The dogs are dangerous. They may or may not bit at greater rates, but when they snap, the damage they do is much, much worse. And I'm sick of being told that the bad dogs are all owned by bad people, and that we should punish the owners, not the lovely little doggies. Great: then let good, responsible pit owners get behind a campaign to require that all pits be neutered and that anyone with a pit that attacks—which are always, by their self-serving definition, dogs with bad owners (since well-cared-for pits don't ever snap and attack)—will face assault and/or manslaughter charges. And a one-strike law for letting your pit run loose too, please.
The day pit owners—the good, responsible pit owners, with lovely, loving pits—start gathering signatures to pass all of that into law, I may stop taking occasional note pit bull attacks.
I say we gather up all the pit bulls in Seattle, put lipstick on them, give them all tasers and badges, and replace all the SPD officers with armed and make-up-ed pit bulls.
And have them raid the Stranger offices right smack in the middle of their next production cycle.
Uzbeks drank my brake fluid!
That is all, Seattle hipsters, until my next incoherent, off-topic, moonbatshit crazy rant.
Dan, what I'm saying is that if you take away their vicious, unneutered pit bull, they will just get a vicious, unneutered rottweiler or chow or husky or german shepherd. The RMN story you linked to actually hinted that could be what is happening. The study of dog attacks in Monmouth County, OR (the one that Golob bizarrely interpreted to be all about his favorite subject, genetics of course) made it crystal clear that testosterone is six time greater a factor than breed in dog attacks.
Or put another way, the aggressiveness that morons look for in a dog comes much more from their testicles being intact than from their breed.
Or put another way, cities with pit bull bans have nothing to show for it. Cities with well-run, well-funded animal control and population control programs have a lot to show for it.
And you might not be hoping for a Pulitzer, but clearly you want the sensationalism that goes with whipping up a mob. Plus, a breed ban costs the taxpayer nothing (and gives nothing back). Programs that work cost money that we aren't willing to spend.
(PC, the reason I'm not responding to whatever you wrote is that I scrolled past without reading. Not worth my time.)
The two things that scare me around my house is the Pit Bull that lives next door to my place (he has charged me two times in the last couple of weeks) and Mars Hill Church down on 95th Street and 35th Ave NE. Well, and the idea of President Sarah Palin....
PC said...
And one word in response from you that's not rational argument, you become "Pitbullelenchos" forevermore.
@15
Sure we ban wolves, but wolves don't attack people. #19 makes a good point. People are buying pits right now because they're the current 'tough guy' dog. Much like Rottweilers, Pinschers and German Shepards used to be.
If people want big scary dogs, they'll get big scary dogs. If you ban all the big scary dogs, they'll find some other way to be dangerous and threatening.
Not to mention, most reports of pit bull attacks aren't actually pit bulls. There's a ton of breeds that look like pit bulls, and when any of them bites, responsible reporters, like the sloggers here, say it's a pit bull to get more sensationalism going.
Google it sometime:
http://www.pitbullsontheweb.com/petbull/findpit.html
I love when people who don't understand something have knee jerk reactions and try to solve the problem they don't understand at all.
Gage: Ruff, ruff, ruff, ruff, Ruff! Ruff, ruff, ruff, ruff, ruff, ruff.
translation: for the love of God! please stop bleeding me!
If a pit bull ban prevented one person from being mauled it would be worth it, but it wouldn't show up in the statistics.
The difference between pit bulls and guns, cars, and gay men (that's a strange list) is that there's nothing that pit bulls provide that can't be provided by other breeds. So all the above comparisons are rather absurd and the people making them are silly.
Mikeblanco, there are hundreds of things you could ban that might save one person. Why not ban power tools? Or fireplaces? But perhaps a pit bull ban will have no detectable effect at all, as we have seen elsewhere, yet someone is hurt trying to enforce it. Maybe an exodus of pit bull owners causes even more death where they all migrate to. Maybe a worker will get stuck by an infected needle trying to euthanize a banned pit bull. Might happen, and that would be on your conscience!
Who knows? Anything is possible in the demon-haunted world of irrational fear mongering. Do you want us to make policy that way? Or to follow a course based on evidence and reason?
elenchos @19:
So, it sounds like you would support manslaughter charges against "bad" pit owners whose dogs tear off someone's face? Just not a breed ban.
Until people can tell the difference between a pit bull and a bull dog, breed legislation won't work. I actually had someone go to my complex management and claim I had an illegal pit bull and my dog was a german shepherd and collie cross!
@26
Um sure. Care to tell me what is wrong with existing law that prevents owners from being held accountable?
Other than a lack of animal control officers, as well as the smallest police force in the nation.
For example, the dogs in that tag team attack a couple weeks back were known to be roaming the neighborhood, and vicious. If we were willing to pay for animal control enforcement, they could have been picked up and euthanized. We had a known menace, and the laws to prevent it, but why didn't we?
This is what I mean: we have laws that could have easily prevented many dog attacks, but we won't pay a dime in taxes to enforce them. Given that we won't even pay the cost of enforcing the laws we have, how could we expect a pit bull ban to work? Especially since those cities that, unlike us, did pay to enforce the law, didn't even see any benefit?
We need to make laws to solve problems, not to placate hysterics who react to every lurid headline.
@13: Those simply aren't the top six male US serial killers. I don't have a list of who are, but Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer, confessed to 48 murders, and claimed to have done 71, beating all of your list.
Riddle me this, elenchos: If pit bulls had been banned nation-wide a year ago, and anyone found owning a pit bull had been prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law in that time, how many of the pit bull attack stories we've read over the past several months would we NOT have read about?
Answer: ALL of them.
@30: Substitute Pitbulls with drugs. Idiot
COMTE, are you kidding? What if heroin had been banned a year ago, and everyone who used or sold it had been prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law? How many OD's would have been prevented? ALL of them?
Oh, wait. We did all that and it doesn't work that way does it. (St. Francis beat me to this glaringly obvious point.)
Look, a year ago dogs were banned from roaming free, and dogs who were known to roam free and bite people could legally be picked up and euthanized. And the owners of those dogs could have faced prosecution.
Yet none of that happened, in spite of the law that already existed.
But you want to go ahead and toss another law on top of the ones we already don't enforce? Why? To make yourself feel better? Out of spite?
Why not ask for action that will have a meaningful impact?
@24: Seriously, Mikeblanco banning swimming pools, gas grills and scooters would probably save at least one life a year -- should we ban all of them too?
@30: If these people didn't own pit bulls, what's to say they wouldn't have bought and trained another dog to become vicious -- would you also support bans on German Shepherds, , dobermans, mastiffs, and any other dog bigger than a chihuahua?
I completely support manslaughter charges for anyone whose dog kills someone. This has happened in other states. Why not here?
Hey, I just realized, COMTE said we would read about none of the pitbull attacks if we had a "nationwide ban" on them. Maybe that means that if we give these crusading local reporters their precious pit bull ban, they'll stop overhyping every story, for fear of looking like they led us on a fool's errand.
Could be. And if it were true, I'd be willing to go along with just about anything to get them to stop pumping these stories and just report the news straight.
When you effectively deal with the problems of poverty, social strain, labeling, broken families and the mass culture identification with aggressors then you create a world where nobody needs or wants pits. As long as the root causes of pit addiction exist you'll never get rid of the damn things. Prohipition won't work.
"The dog in Saturday's horrible killing was, yes as almost always, a German Shepherd, commonly called a police dog.....Yet, we go on permitting this dangerous, slinky breed to multiple and to run at large. Think twice before buying a police dog. Keep a rattlesnake instead. It will give a warning at least." (The Progress, February 11, 1947)
There should be a clause in the ordinance outlawing private ownership of German Shepherds. This may sound like an archaic or narrow-minded view, but I believe the shepherd to be an unpredictable animal. Every time you read about a child being killed or mauled, by a dog or dogs, the odds are overwhelming that the dirty work was done by the shepherd. A father in West Virginia battled a pack of shepherds with a garden hoe while they tore his two small sons to pieces. A little girl in Houston who was horribly maimed by a shepherd must go for the rest of her life wearing a wig. So far, a San Antonio kid hasn't been seriously hurt or killed by one of these dogs. But it will happen." (San Antonio Express, July 10, 1969)
I don't remember pit bulls being mutent freak killers 20 or even 10 years age that they are today. There must have been some really f**ked up breeding to make a perfectly normal looking/acting animal like this http://slog.thestranger.com/2008/03/gasp_its_a_propitbull_post into a butt ugly freak like this http://www.sandiegoinjurylawyerblog.com/Pit%20Bull.bmp
Breed bans would be hard to pass, harder to enforce. I think most pit bulls today have been poorly bred, but take the freaks away from their owners and they'll find another "bully breed" to ruin. Mandatory spaying/neutering would be kinder to all pets and cheaper than putting unwanted animals down.
Last time I checked elenchos, Heroin users had a CHOICE as to whether they use or not.
Pit bulls can't stop being pit bulls; the desire to attack is apparently so ingrained into the deepest crevices of their little doggie craniums that no amount of "training" or "socialization" can prevent a pit bull from attacking when that part of its brain compels it to do so. Otherwise, why would so many "good, loving, obedient" pits (as the dogs in these articles are invariably described by their owners or by pro-pit advocates) just suddenly go off?
The breed is inherently unstable, unpredictable, vicious, and deadly, and it needs to go. Or are you and the pro-pit lobby in favor of sacrificing more innocent human lives for the sake of keeping your precious little monsters?
@39: Comte, are there other breeds you would ban? And when you say "it needs to go," do you mean we should euthanize all pit bulls? Would this extend to mutts who might have a pit bull parent? How do we determine this?
Dan, your posts are spot on. It's oddly fitting that all these comments about breed bans, violence, heroin, and serial killers completely miss the point, yet simultaneously confirm my suspicions about the shortage of logic rattling around in pitbull defenders brains. It is in their best interest, if they are so amazingly convinced that their dogs are so harmless, to do everything they can to guarantee public safety. Jawdropping. I appreciate your attempts to shine a light into the big, gaping, maw that is that is dog worship in this town... even though you'll never get an imaginary Pulitzer from a TV show at this rate. What?!?!
@42: Did you not actually read post 11 or did you not understand it? A comparison was being made between fictional journalists trying to force legislative change for Pulitzer recognition AND real journalists trying to create legislation for ...
Also, I think elenchos was being sarcastic. His point was more "Why is Dan Savage so obsessed with this issue?"
@39: Do you have any scientific proof that pitbulls are more dangerous than other dog breeds?
That is a simple yes or no answer.
@39
Do I also get a choice about whether I get robbed by a junkie? Do I get a choice about whether or not they try to sell drugs to my kid? Did the park ranger killed by drug criminals this weekend have choice?
The scientific data, such as the recent AVMA study in Multnomah County, OR, shows that there is a large increased risk from intact male dogs of all breeds, and only a slight increased risk based on breed alone. That increase can be accounted for by the popularity of pit bulls and other macho dogs among people who want a violent dog, due to the very media hype that has distorted your own reality.
Pit bulls are not precious to me. I don't have one and I'm not getting one. Some pit bull owners are single women, but most are insecure men with a small dick, a handgun, and a big truck.
I'm just anti-idiot, and pro-spay/neuter.
holy moly. drugs and dogs are very different things. we ban all kinds of things and it works fine. if you seriously think a lead-paint ban is pointless because painters will buy lead paint on the street... i sigh at you.
breed bans work, at least partially -- they were very effective in eliminating domestic wolf hybrids in the 80's and 90's.
pit bulls are the most dangerous dog (nobody cares if it's because they have douchebag owners or whatever). yes, rottweilers and german shepherds are dangerous too. go ahead and ban them when they become a major problem in 2057 or whatever, but they're not nearly the problem that pit bulls are right now.
a universal neutering program is absolutely ridiculous. are you going to go door to door demanding to see every dog's genitals to make sure they're neutered? it would be a much much scarier invasion of privacy than to just tell breeders/shelters that they can't sell pit bulls.
# American Veterinary Medical Association:
"The AVMA supports dangerous animal legislation by state, county, or municipal government provided that legislation does not refer to specific breeds or classes of animals."
# National Animal Control Association:
"Dangerous and/or vicious animals should be labeled as such as a result of their actions or behavior and not because of their breed."
# Humane Society of the United States:
"HSUS opposes breed specific regulations because they do not address the underlying issues of owner behavior and responsibility."
# The American Kennel Club:
"Strongly opposes any legislation that determines a dog to be "dangerous" based on specific breed or phenotypic classes of dogs."
# American Humane Association:
"American Humane Association supports local legislation that protects communities from dangerous animals, but does not advocate laws that target specific breeds of dogs."
The Moses Lake City Council wimped out yesterday when they were supposed to discuss a pit bull ban and decided to leave it up to the dog owners.
Yikes. Cancel our vacation in Moses Lake, Honey!
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