Pit bull apologists always sing the same tune

I'm deeply saddened by the tragic death of yet another innocent child, Katya Todesco, due to what should be defined as an act of domestic terrorism, perpetrated by the dog's owner.

As a father of two children, and a responsible owner of two dogs, I know both sides of this sad story. Yet the story is nearly always the same with a pit bull attack: a child attacked, sometimes killed; a funeral with a small casket is held, and the owners walk free, perplexed at how their "good dog" could have done such a thing.

Then it's the usual defenders like Kathy Jenks employing distorted logic to claim that pit bulls are no more dangerous than any other dog, which anyone with two eyes and one ounce of common sense knows is absurd.

She cites Labrador retrievers as one of the "biters" in a dog bite study, which is false logic, since Labs are America's most popular dog.

But Labs aren't known for killing people; pit bulls are, and the facts support this. In fact, a University of Minnesota study of 19 years listed human deaths from pit bulls at 66, Rottweilers at 39. Labradors and Chihuahuas somehow escaped the study as killers.

The Clifton study, performed over 24 years, lists pit bulls 5,500 percent more likely to kill a human than a Labrador. Coincidentally, no insurance company will insure a homeowner with either a pit bull or a Rottweiler.

Also, the pit bull breed has been banned outright in 25 U.S. cities so far, and six countries and many other major foreign cities, for good reason: The breed is a menace that has no place in our communities and should be banned nationally.

But if we refuse to protect our kids from these dangerous animals, at the very least manslaughter charges should be brought against pit bull owners whose dogs kill.

If we just ban firearms then we remove the danger of somebody getting killed. Accountablility for a criminal shooting an innocent person is only applied after the fact.

Isn't that really the most interesting example!

If the guy next door owns 1 or 5 or 15 firearms, I don't worry about them climbing under or over the fence and killing my kid. He's got to be incredibly irresponsible or a bad actor before I'm going to get worried and before my kid is hurt.

I m struggling to suggest that mere ownership of one of the aggressive breeds (if that's okay to say) is a little more frightening to the parent next door than is ownership of firearms. Yeah a firearm, with a full magazine in it and a little skill behind it can kill lots of folks. The pitbull will maybe kill a dog and a child and then be killed or driven off.

So how to figure in the differences is an interesting problem.

It's okay to kill improperly supervised kids? Gotta protect those meth labs.

Absolutely not. That's why the parents belong in prison. They effectively killed their child the same as if they had let him play in traffic or handle a loaded gun. There are all kinds of hazards out there. Property owners have the responsibility to properly mark, enclose and warn others of them, but they don't have the responsibility of supervising their neighbors children. That same child could just as well have scaled a fence and drowned in a neighbors pool. Drowning deaths are far more common than fatal dog attacks, (more than 100 times as common).

You don't get it, do you? There's nothing to defend there. Dogs can be dangerous, but if you scale a 12' high enclosure containing dogs, then it's your fault when you get hurt. Since it was a 2 year old it's the child's parent's fault, as they should have been supervising their child. The child could just have easily fallen from 12' up and broken his neck.

All sorts of things are dangerous in this world and if you have something potentially dangerous, like a car, pool, dog or gun then you have the responsibility to use adequate safeguards to protect your neighbors, but if someone disregards or violates those safeguards it's not the property owners fault. A 12' high fence I think would meet nearly everyone's standards for what is adequate to contain a dog.

Now myself, I have serious doubts about the veracity of this story. Either something is being exaggerated or left out. First off, there are almost no 12' high fences in residential neighborhoods and they nearly always require a permit. Second, I think it would be next to impossible to find a jury who would convict someone who had the dogs contained in a 12' high enclosure. Third, even if they did convict it would almost certainly be for manslaughter rather than second degree murder.

I also have trouble seeing this as being an incident that would be confined to pit bulls. Anytime you enter the territory of multiple, large dogs with aggressive temperaments you are taking your life into your hands. I could easily see this same thing happening with chows or rottweilers.

And BTW, I do not own pit bulls. I never have and likely never will. They're just more liability than I wish to be responsible for, but the key word is responsibility. People who don't take responsibility for their animals, (or in this case their children), are the problem, not the animals.

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