Of your 13 links of "carnage":
Two sets of links were found to be the same story told by different reporters, one of a postal worker, and the other of a dog-involved accident where a woman was bitten on the wrist.
One of the links was to a story where a police officer shot a pit bull that was attacking another dog he was living with, and on private property, when no one was home. The incident is under investigation, as no people were involved and it was on private property.
Another one was of a police officer who shot a pit bull after it was ordered to attack by its owner. There were no injuries, because the dog didn't attack anyone.
The first link was dead, but the url appeared to be from the same place as the link of pit bulls attacking children on a golf course, a little further down. Funny thing that one of the children was not injured because the pit bull couldn't bite through his jeans?
Another link was a greyhound that was attacked by a pit bull. No people were attacked, although the owner of the dog sustained minor wounds from breaking up the fight.
The rest of the links were actual attacks by pit bulls. There were 5 of those, none of which caused anything more than minor injuries, except for the little girl who's leg was very severely torn up. I feel bad for that little girl. No one should have to endure something that brutal.
Here's another statistic: Approximately 4 million dog attacks happen each year, regardless of what breed is the most popular. Pit bulls are included in that statistic, and happen to actually attack people less often than other breeds. I believe the ones that bite the most are labs, dalmations, and cocker spaniels, perhaps not in that order, and there may be some other breeds in there, but none that anyone would think are dangerous breeds.
That means every month there are three hundred thirty three thousand attacks on people by dogs. And if reporters are showing all the attacks by pit bulls that they can find, then WOW. They hardly attack at all compared to the total of all the breeds.
"According to statistics kept by city of Boulder Animal Care and Control, "labs" — as they are so innocently called — were responsible for an astonishing 18.9 percent of the 748 dog bites in the city from 1997 to 2003, more than twice as many as the next highest breed (German shepherds, at 8.5 percent)."
I have said it before and I will say it again. Any dog can attack, and apparently they do. If it was a breed problem, then we would have about 4 million attacks just from pit bulls, and a whole helluva lot more deaths.
Still, this is nowhere near the epidemic the media makes it out to be.
"99.9% of all dogs, from all breeds, will never be involved in an attack at any time in their lives."
Cited from http://goodpooch.com/bsl.htm#banlabs
And 0.01333% of people are killed by dogs a year, if every year there were 27 deaths. The average is between 15-20 deaths a year right now.
Stats and risk are funny things solo... your are approaching your strawman backwards.
A non AT RISK breed owner looks at it this way....Say a neighbor moves in next door and has two pit bulls instead of two labs.
Since Labs have killed one person and Pits are closing in on 100 deaths, My dogs, kids and neighbors are now 100 times more likely to be killed by a dog. The Mauling risk is even greater. The risk to the small dogs in the neighborhood is huge.
That's how the public looks at it.
"We have not yet come across a single incident of unprovoked aggression by a dog, that couldn't have been easily prevented by appropriate training or supervision. When put this simply, we wonder why authorities choose NOT to hold the dog's owners wholly responsible? Any attempts to blame the dog are merely a way of excusing irresponsible dog owners for their negligence. If dog owners are excused from accountability, they will repeat their offences."
- GoodPooch.com
We can't emphasize this enough. "The public" is not involved in the overwhelming majority of dog bite cases. Any attempts to ban dog breeds or enact stiffer leash laws will have little effect, since we know people are usually bitten by a dog they know (not a stranger walking his/her dog in public) while the dog is on its own property, where leash laws do not apply. (Supervised dogs in neutral, public places are attributed with fewer than 1% of bites.) Some might even suggest that those who hide behind a facade of "public safety" are being intentionally misleading. Anyone who implies that the cause for dog bites is predominantly anything other than irresponsible owners leaving their poorly socialized dogs (and usually their children) unsupervised, is just plain wrong. The statistics bear this out.