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800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
Do you support marriage rights for polygamists?
Do you support bukkit rights for lolruses?
Any of those dogs (and many, many others) can be trained or neglected into being vicious. Breed specific bans are too hard to enforce, surely there's another alternative? What about mandatory insurance for people with dogs that weigh over X amount? This is a health problem (not dog bite deaths which are statistically insignificant, but dog bite injuries) and it's not easy to solve naively.
@Dan, seriously, the pit-bull alerts are probably a worthwhile public service (are there any other dangerous domestic animals out there we should know about?). But it's too bad that pit-bull owners are unlikely to read Stranger/SLOG much. How can we get a Dan a guest column in Vibe or Lowrider or Soldier of Fortune?
As weeksie pointed out, the reason pit bulls can be dangerous is because they are powerful dogs. In the hands of the wrong owner - and many people who want to own pits are the wrong people to own them - a pit can be a menace. Far more chihuahuas are aggressive, but their bite is nonthreatening.
I'd like to advocate that my dog is incredibly sweet and loving. This is because he is well trained and cared for. He has never acted aggressively towards a human. We trust him with babies - he sniffs them with an air of perplexity and moves on. Before pits got their reputation as killers, they were the American family dog (remember Li'l Rascals? Patches was a pit). Teddy Roosevelt bred them. They were nicknamed 'babysitters' because you could leave them home with the kids and know that your dog would guard them carefully.
My point is that pits were bred to be loyal, smart dogs. It is at least as against their 'nature' as any other breed to turn on humans - but you do have to watch them with other dogs. Sheer neglect and cruelty, or clueless owners who don't take appropriate measures, are to blame for a vicious dog, be it a pit or any other breed.
So please, dont dis it until you try it. Downtown TorC is totally adorable, artsy, and full of hot spring hotels.
Sure, there are assholes everywhere. And pitbulls.
That's nasty.
Maybe you should find an American gynecologist.
I place all the responsibility for all dogs' actions on their breeders and their owners.
Yes, I have euthanized dangerous dogs. It's a pity something similarly permanently corrective can't be done with some dog breeders and owners out there.
Focusing on pitbulls as the problem misses the actual source of the problem and also overlooks other dogs that might be equally if not more dangerous.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hw5aThdcx…
And this was posted in one of the replies. A very well written article that makes some great points:
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/02…
Oh no, wait, that whole line of reasoning makes absolutely no sense. My bad.
Do you support marriage rights for polygamists?
Do you support lolicon rights for Pedobear?
It's the owners that people should be focused on. But again, irresponsible owners of pit bulls (the kind that breed them to fight) are generally poor and non-white, and the liberal injunction against treating poor non-whites as anything other than helpless victims of white oppression prevents liberals from pointing the finger at the true culprits.
So, people like Dan, who is nothing if not a zealous adherent to the liberal party line, are incapable of addressing the true cause here. And it's a shame. I've said it before, but if Dan could exit the ideological framework he has adopted and look at issues independently of ideology, he would be able to bring a lot to the discussion. Instead, he's fantastic at the issues he can see the nuance in, but a drooling retard when it comes to issues he chooses to view black-and-whitely.
In areas where they have banned pit bulls, breeders have taken to breeding and fighting other breeds.
yeah, imagining the troll inside of you, that's it.....
Lots of things have the potential to cause harm, as you are always preaching when you defend the things that YOU find worthy.
I feel awful for that lady but and think that the owner should be severely punished for gross negligence leading to a homicide.
@21, 24: Marijuana doesn't have agency or kill people you idi... well, I don't want to start flaming, at least not in that sense. That's a big False Equivalency - if marijuana were running around jumping in brownies and blowing its own smoke in people's faces and this was killing them, then you might have a point with your comparison, and I would probably support the ban on marijuana. As it stands, you're trying to make a point for the ownership of dog breeds that were bred for fighting by comparing apples to pit bulls. I don't even necessarily disagree with your position (I don't have enough info on the prevalence of dog attacks, the skew toward certain breeds, etc. to make an informed judgement), but the way you're going about failing to make your point is terrible.
The problem is owners who abuse animals and train them to fight; creating mentally disturbed, vicious animals. Penalize the animal abusers, not the breed.
In other words, it's probably better to pay attention to what the point actually is before going on at length about a point no one is making and how they're making it terribly.