michael Joubert
Posted : 9/9/2007 6:49:22 PM
I guess you missed this gem in your link
However, while banning the pit bull might lower the number of human deaths, such a ban would probably not reduce the number dog bites in any significant manner. After the United Kingdom banned pit bulls in the 1990s, a study showed that the number of dog bites remained the same even though the number of pit bulls had steeply declined. (Study cited in B. Heady and P. Krause, "Health Benefits and Potential Public Savings Due to Pets: Australian and German Survey Results," Australian Social Monitor, Vol.2, No.2, May 1999.)
As a practical matter, the current tide of public outrage should be focused on the enactment of measures that would deal effectively with the entire epidemic, not merely the breeds that kill. It would be unwise to enact all kinds of controls on one or two breeds, not necessarily because it would be unfair, but because it would produce narrow and therefore unsatisfactory results
Is it possible that you only take that which suits your stance on the subject?
here's some more from your link
However, the focus on death cases may leave the public with the false impression that pit bulls and Rottweilers are responsible for the dog bite epidemic. It is a much broader problem than that, involving all dogs and all dog owners. While pit bulls and Rottweilers inflict a disproportionate number of serious and even fatal injuries, the dog bite epidemic involves many different breeds, and results from many different causes. A clear distinction needs to be made between canine homicides (i.e., incidents in which dogs kill people) and the dog bite epidemic.
You also forgot to mention one other breed to your citing of the 2/3 statistic, and the mixes as well
According to the Clifton study, pit bulls, Rottweilers, Presa Canarios and their mixes are responsible for 74% of attacks that were included in the study, 68% of the attacks upon children, 82% of the attacks upon adults, 65% of the deaths, and 68% of the maimings. In more than two-thirds of the cases included in the study, the life-threatening or fatal attack was apparently the first known dangerous behavior by the animal in question.
Now how does one go about identifying a mixed breed dogs parentage?