I see a pit bull not on a leash and I shoot him dead on the spot
But let a police officer do this, in the interest of public safety, and he is excoriated and his head demanded by some "conservatives."
EggActly. I carry a John Norrell Suppressed 77/22 and suppressed pistol just for the occasion. I've killed a half dozen dogs on the loose in Central AR.
I came close to doing that a couple of years ago. I was walking my Corgi one evening (not quite dark out) when a Pitbull attacked him from behind about 5 houses down from mine. This dog did not bark, or otherwise signify its presence. It silently ran up and had my dog by the back of the neck and was violently shaking him like a rag-doll. The Pitbull had no collar and no owner was around. I was walking armed with my .38 Airweight in my pocket holster. I wasn't even sure if my dog was alive when I shot the Pitbull once. He still continued as if nothing had happened until I shot it again; at which point it released my dog and slunk off into the yard.
Before I could call the police, a policewoman drove up almost immediately. She either had heard the shots or may have seen at least one of them. she was en route because they had already been called because the dog had cornered a lady in her garage (at the house where I shot the dog). The police were very supportive. They took my pistol and CHL and returned them after I'd made a report. the pitbull actually survived. Both my shots hit it, but they hit muscle and passed through.
The thing that gets me about it is the way the pitbull silently ran from the garage where the lady was trapped straight to my dog with the express motive of killing it. the dog just freakin' appeared. For a second I was dumbfounded as I didn't know what was happening. It was as if Samantha from Bewitched had twitched her nose and a killer dog suddenly appeared out of nowhere. It was a "now you don't see it, now you do" situation. the dog had "broken out of its own fence" after its owner had gone to work and was out to see what it could kill, I guess. Before shooting it, i tried kicking it and grabbing it. It had mass like a sack of concrete.
My dog survived with only some puncture wounds on the back of his neck.
You'd run out of ammo here in my little soviet Red Hampshire hamlet. Thugs and their ilk moving in from New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey. With a school nearby, it is just a matter of time. Tick, tick, tick...