Ditto! Well said
Should this apply to children also?
Children do not own dogs. Their parents own the dogs.
Can you lock children in a cage? When you line up with an army of straw men, you may be fighting for the wrong side.
Oooh, nice straw man there... No, dogs are property any children are not. I can take a dangerous dog out and shoot it, problem solved. Not so much with a child.
Now, if I had been informed that my child was having mental issues and was capable of doing horrible things to other people and did nothing about the situation? Sure, I have responsibility there. It's the same argument about the difference between Cockers and Pits. I know that my daughter is not going to kill anyone any time soon. If I thought she might, I would likely do something about it.
If you own a Pit Bull, or any other breed of animal, that kills another human being, you have committed murder and should be treated as such. End of story.Ditto! Well said
Should this apply to children also?
Spokane, were you saying that the parents of children who commit crimes should be held responsible for the acts of their minor children? Hmmm.
So let's change the dogs for the dog owners' 12 year old son. The son gets into a fight with the other child, which results in the child's death. The son is killed by the police when separating the two. No one knows how the fight started. Would everyone want to send the parents to jail for the actions of the son?
You know, sometimes tragedies just happen and no one needs to be "punished" for them. Reading this thread, I would swear some of the posters snuck over from D.U., making fun of the dog owners' grammar, taking an urban view of things, etc.
The bottom line is a child was killed, which is terrible. But, we do not know the circumstances.
Would you judge things different if the child was poking the dogs with a stick? What if he was dangling potato chips over them and snatching them away? We do not know if the child was doing those things, though other children have done things like that. We do not know if the child provoked the dogs, or not. There's no reason to assume he did, but there's also no reason to assume the dogs would suddenly turn and attack, other than their breed.
Based on the breed, the owners are going to jail for SEVEN years? Would they be going to jail if the dogs were Goldens?
The average sentence given to child molesters is seven years (Source). The average sentence given for violent crime is seven and a half years (Source).
If the owners bred the dogs for fighting and let them run free, it would be one thing. But they weren't. If the dogs had a history of violent behavior, it would be one thing. But these dogs did not.
True, the dogs weren't fenced. But these were people in the country, not the city or suburbs.
Is there enough reasonable doubt to prevent incarcerating two people for the same time as a child molester or violent criminal? This seems harsh to me. It's not as big a stretch as blaming the gun manufacturer when a handgun is used in a crime, but it's not far from it.
For those who condemn the dog breed, you might want to read the following first...
Pit bull attack stats may surprise you
Thursday, July 07, 2005Last week, I received a phone call from someone wanting to know the truth behind pit bull statistics. And, on June 12, in a letter to the editor, a reader wrote about his fear of pit bulls. He said, "These dogs have killed more than 100 individuals in the past five years. If an automobile had a defect that killed 100 people, there would be a public outcry."
After you start looking a little deeper, the numbers tell a different tale. According to "Fatal Dog Attacks, the Stories Behind the Statistics," by Karen Delise there were 431 deaths because of dog attacks in the years from 1965 to 2001. Children 12 younger were the victims in 79 percent of the fatal attacks.
In 37 years, 342 children were killed by dogs, an average of about nine children a year. Shockingly, approximately three children are killed each day, or 1,100 per year, by their parents. Delise notes that "A child in the United States is over 100 times more likely to be killed by his or her parent or caretaker than by a dog."
Even more surprising is that approximately 50 infants die each year from broken baby cribs, and 250 newborns die at the hands of their parents or guardians. In comparison, two infants, on average, die a year from dog attacks.
Pit bull and pit mixes account for 21 percent of all human fatalities, while mixed breed dogs account for 16 percent and other nonspecified breeds, 15 percent. Delise's study demonstrates that the breed of dog should not be the sole factor by which an attack is judged. Other factors include inherited and learned behaviors, genetics, breeding, temperament, surgical sterilization, environmental stresses, owner responsibility, victim behavior, size and age, timing, and the physical condition and the size of dog.
Of the 28 dogs responsible for a fatal attack between 2000 and 2001, 26 were males and two were females. Of the 26 males, 21 were sexually intact; the reproductive status of the remaining five male dogs could not be determined. The male dog that killed the 12-year-old boy in San Francisco on June 3 was protecting his female dog in heat.
An owner's understanding of dogs, supervision of dogs and children, sterilization and chaining as a primary means of confinement all can play roles in attacks. Whether dogs were obtained for protection, guarding, fighting, are newly acquired or not properly introduced to newborns are among other issues.
In the end, many factors contribute to dog attacks. A popular slogan seems to capture the sentiment perfectly, "Judge the Deed Not the Breed."