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How many times do you hear *But he’d never hurt a flea, He’s so gentle. He never acted this way before.”? Way too often in these attack stories.

You hear this (if you can believe it) in the vast majority of dog attacks by any breed/type.

What do you really expect to hear...
"Well yeah, he's mauled a dozen people before so I'm not really surprised"

I'd be willing to bet that in most cases there has actually been previous questionable behavior that should have served as a warning.

...or the dog was placed in a situation that it had never been in before.

I’ve never seen training completely eliminate from a dog its instincts and killing is an instinct for these dogs. One day it’s going to fail, and it’s not worth the consequences.

And just what is your experience?
Killing is an instinct for all dogs. The sooner we get that understood the sooner
we'll start dealing with the problem an a rational manner
My beagle went on a romp one day in the farmyard and killed every chicken there.
Obviously larger dogs can potentially cause greater damage
but when you're taking about the young or the very old
even smaller dogs are potentially lethal.
Some dogs were bred to be used as hunters, terriers being one of them.
But that aggression should never be directed towards humans
and despite these extremely rare occurrences compared to the total population,
that are reported and sensationalized by the media,
the fact is 'pit bulls' were never bred to kill humans.
They were bred for certain physical characteristics that would make
for an effective fighter...small, agile and for a tenacious (game) mentality.
They would then be tested (goaded into fighting) in the pit...not all of them showed interest in scrapping with other dogs.
It's not something they all 'live for'.
(I've posted an email before about a JRT that attack a friend's Amstaff,
the Amstaff just cried in pain while the owner struggled to get the JR to release)
Aggression towards humans meant immediate culling.
This behavior is an aberration of what a 'pit bull' should be
not a defining characteristic of the breed/type.
If 'they lived to kill' people we would be inundated with deaths
not the relatively few compared to population that we do see.
The facts indicate that "One day it’s going to fail" just isn't the case
for the overwhelmingly vast proportion of dogs.

In virtually every case these problems are not primarily caused by the dogs but by negligent owners.
Just look at this case...pack of loose dogs...receipt for tragedy.
In my neck of the woods we see this happening more often with Husky types
but the results are the same.
Any medium to large size dogs running in a pack is trouble waiting to happen.

Bottom line...
Education and strict enforcement of effective laws with adequate penalties
is the proven way to go about reducing all dog attacks.