Boy! Me too.
Not to energize the pro- or anti- pitbull debate (I grew up with them so...) but I had an opportunity to get a glimpse of dog bite stats a fews ago.
I work in public health (normally on the enviro side - this was a TDY thing). I had to go over all the reported dog bite stats for my state for like three years. Imagine my horror when my own favorite breed, the Shetland Sheepdog, turned up in something like position number 11!
Now, Shelties can't inflict life threatening damage (I don't think) but they did turn up as biters. Labs were on the top 20 list too.
Essentially, any popular dog breed is going to be responsible for a large number of bites. Pits can just do one heck of a lot more damage.
Of course, statistics are small comfort if it's YOUR arm torn off or YOUR kid in the hospital.
Exactly.... People couldn't probably list more than the 20 most popular identifyable breeds in the country, so it doesn't surprise me that any popular breed ends up somewhere in the top 20. The rate of serious bites to population would be the ~more~ interesting figure.
That said.... The pit bull and it's relatives are still going to be the leader by a long shot in serious and most particularly, ~fatal~ dog attacks.