“According to this Pit bulls are responsible for 27% of the total fatalities and they aren’t even in the top fifty most popular breeds.How can you not say they are a special case.”
“pitbull” is not a breed.
Unless I’m mistaken, the statistics you provide,
are based on AKC registrations of purebreds.
The AKC only registers American Staffordshire Terriers.
One of the problems in determining “relative” danger of a breed
is that one needs an accurate ratio of the number of bites to the total population.
Determining the numerator and denominator is very difficult.
For example with regard to the numerator...
We have a popular label “pitbull”, but what do we mean by it?
It appears all too often that the “pitbull’ label
is applied to dogs involved in attacks in a reflexive manner.
If pressed I could supply examples but for brevity let me mention a recent attack.
A grandmother left a baby alone on a bed near 2 “guard dog” “pitbulls”.
The baby is said to have fallen off the bed
and startled the dogs leading to the attack.
Two seperate accounts by neighbors familiar with the dogs
reported their weight as 120lbs in one case and 150lbs in the other.
The 3 breeds that are “normally” tagged with the label “pitbull”
come nowhere near those weights.
70-75lbs should be the MAXIMUM weight of one, the American Staffordshire Terrier (AST).
The other 2 breeds, the American Pitbull Terrier (APT)
and the Staffordshire Bull Terrier (SBT) are even lighter.
I’m not saying the dogs weren’t “pitbulls”
but caution is advised when reading such reports.
We could broaden the definition of “pitbulls’ to include
all short haired dogs weighing between 40 and 150 lbs
but such a description is too vague and sweeping
to use as a basis for sound analysis of the danger
of particular breeds relative to their population.
The denominator (total population) is a whole other problem
fraught with lack of accuracy and uncertainties
I recommend...
“A Community Approach to Dog Bite Prevention
Prepared by the American Veterinary Medical Association’s Task Force on Canine Aggression and Human-Canine Interactions”
http://www.avma.org/public_health/dogbite/dogbite.pdf
...as a good rational basis for discussing and formulating
a comprehensive approach to dog bite prevention.
Here’s a thought.
All dogs must be in a fenced area or if outside with the owner, on a leash. Any dog not so fenced or leashed is a moving target. If anyone’s dog attacks and injures another person, the dog owner gets fined and publically caned.
If a dog kills someone, the owner is executed.
This would take care of all vicious dog problems within a short time.
I am not kidding, I am perfectly serious.