Should the law get rid of dangerous dogs?

First of all, they refer to the dog as a pitbull mastiff, which, I have to assume, is a cross between a pitbull and a mastiff. That has to be hell of a big dog (mastiffs are huge).

I do think the owners of the dog should face some type of criminal charges in this case. Putting the dog down is not adequate punishment. If you want to own a big, ass kicking, it can kill you if it feels like it dog, then you bear the responsibility of what it does if it happens to escape from your property.

That said, I'm not sure you shouldn't be allowed to own one at all. Perhaps some added measures like it has to be kept in a fenced in area at all times, or some other precaution to make sure it stays on your property.

Involuntary manslaughter seems about right to me. Simply charging people and sending them to jail for a few years every time one gets out and attacks someone should greatly reduce the demand for them. Right now, the normal punishment is the dog gets put down. Which is certainly a punishment for the dog, but not the owner.

 

Unfortunately self feeding.

Dog A gets a bad reputation (Justly OR injustly)
Person X decides he wants a badass dog to go with his excellent socially aware attitude.*
Dog A goes to an utter asshat.
Dog A gets a bad reputation...

I'm with my partner on the issue. I think most pets should require a license of some sort. I'm shocked as we're getting a Bearded Dragon next month and we don't even have to prove ID or apply for an exotic pets license.

There are, noticeably, problem breeds in most species, whether it's collective behavioral or health.

Driving Licenses have different levels where you can drive different vehicles and also have points whereupon you have to go to a course to prove your understanding of driving and driving laws or even lose your license. I know several people who have absolutely appalled me with their treatment of pets, up to and including a woman who serially has pets put down when she gets bored of them. Typically a span of months.

I would not hesitate to apply a small effort of paperwork and carrying a card (or set of cards, would have to consider the grouping of animal types and handling requirements I guess...) around if I wanted to get a pet for the security of animals that risk going to dreadful homes.

*

Spoiler

HO NOES! SARCASM!

 

Certain breeds of dogs should be considered dangerous animals. There should be restrictions on ownership of these animals and specific requirement for owners (such as ensuring the owners and animals are trained and have adequate insurance).

 

When Beren starts teaching again in the fall, he won't have time to be able to create as many threads as he is doing now. I'm not sure whether that is a good thing or a bad thing.

Anyway, on-topic, I agree with T2.

 

That's a no brainer.

Some Breeds are simply bred for that. Never heard of a Collie going ballistic like that.

The Restrictions have to be far stricter Draconian even. For both, owner and pet.
Also, some animals should not be allowed as 'pets'.

 

I was ready to defend the breed, myself, but then I looked at the numbers, and numbers don't lie. Of the 33 US dog bite fatalities we had in 2010, 22 came from Pit Bulls, 4 came from Rottweilers, 3 came from German Shepherds, and 2 came from mixed breeds. Exactly 0 of the deaths were caused by Golden or Labrador retrievers. Of the breeds listed above, Pit Bulls are the least common, and Rottweilers are the second least common.

http://www.dogsbite.org/bite-fatalities-2010.htm

 

There are other issues at play here as well. In typical areas where dangerous dogs are seen as status symbols, the dogs are actually conditioned to be mean by their owners (beaten, rewarded with food for aggresiveness, etc.). Plus there is typically limited ability for code enforcement in these areas, as it happens moreso in places where crime is already a problem and law enforcement resources are already strained.

So the bottom line is that making a prohibitive law or upping licensing regulations won't necessarily fix it across the board, and even making these dogs illegal to own might not fix it.

[edit] I see Beren's original links refer to cases in Australia, so I can't say whether my above points apply to them. But it's definitely an issue in high crime areas here in the states. If those were just an issue of recklessness and irresponsibility ("heh, it's crazy but my dangerous dog killed some kid - go figure!"), that's just pathetic.

 

From the same respect dangerous people should be put down.

This argument is pathetic, no animal is inherently dangerous from a pshchological point of view, they become dangerous because of physical attribites such as powerful jaws, the simple fact is that many people are attacked by weaker animals, I myself have been attacked by a scotty and a yorkie, the reason I escaped injury was because they are feeble, but they are still aggressive dogs.

There are many powerful breeds of dog, boxer, bulldogs, staffs are all dangerous from a physcal sense, I mentioned the above breeds because I know owners of the 3 breeds and their dogs are loving beautiful animals.

Its time to stop blaming the dog and start blaming humans.

1 - unsupervised children can be attacked by any animal they annoy - the fault rests with the parents for not ensuring their safety,

2 - chav's who keep powerful dogs as a status symbol ant feed them vodka and ham before rileing them up until they kill something are at fault because they are arseholes.

3 - people who keep and train dogs for 'home security' are at fault because a dog is a pet and a friend not a tool to attack intruders.

notice that pitbulls would be the prefered breed for 2 and 3.

 

Shoshino, I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting rounding up all the Pit Bulls and putting them down, simply banning the practice of breeding them, and in some areas (like areas where the population is particularly dense or there are a lot of children around) banning their ownership. It is also true that a lot of smaller dogs are just as prone to attack humans as larger dogs -- but they lack the capacity to do any meaningful damage. Pit Bulls are relatively rare, but more than half of our dog bite fatalities are perpetrated by them. It isn't just "user error" causing these attacks, either. The traits that have been (in)bred into the animal play a very substantial role.

 

Shoshino, I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting rounding up all the Pit Bulls and putting them down

I think Beren was close to suggesting this:

if that were the case why arent we banning every anmal which can cause damage to children in such areas, cats are known to attack children.

and more then half of our gun deaths are caused by gun shots, a tool which is designed to cause damage is going to cause that damage, ever seen a human bite? and I mean a real human bite not these purple marks left by chidren, a haman can comfortably take off your finger or ear your jaws are designed to bite, dogs jaws are designed to bite, the bigger the jaws the more powerful the bite, the bigger the teeth the more damage they will cause.

so, because someone half my size can cause less damage than me, they should not be treated in the same way?

I have never met an animal breeder that believes that traits are bred into an animal, I used to breed rabbits and I agree, animals, like humans learn and base their behaviour on their environment and the way they are treated. Treat an animal like $h!t and it behave like a $hi!t giva an animal love and affection and it will return that love and affection.

 

I'm a simple man. I believe in simple straightforward action. If an animal attacks and kills a human, it should be put down. If the owner was negligent, he should be charged with murder and regardless of the outcome never permitted to own an animal again.

Breeds with stats like the pit bull should require special training on the part of both the owner and the dog before a special license is issued.

Anyone saying "oh, but MY Fluffy would never hurt anyone!" should be summarily banned from ever owning so much as a pet rock. My wife works for the post office and numerous bites occur every year. In almost every case, the owner is one of those tools who think their dog would never bite. Morons.

 

My sister lives with her boyfriend and have a pitbull that was rescued. The owner couldn't feed it and when they got him he was like a skeleton.

Now they've had him for about 3 years, his name is Bubba, and he has to be the most adorable and fun dog i've ever had the pleasure to be around. He really is the friendliest thing i've ever met. His best friend is the cat, Barry (who likes to jump on his back when he runs around), and every few minutes he feels the urge to sit on your lap and lick you as much as he can. He once went out to play with other dogs. This medium sized dog bullied him so bad he had grass stains on his forehead, never fought back, and when he got home he hid his leash. When he got away one time, he was found next door being petted by the little girl that lives there, I could give example after example. I sincerely don't think the concept of violence is even him, he is trained extremely well and even knows to hold back his playing when playing with kids.

In short, my experience with pitbulls like him and others (the only bad ones were with bad owners) leads me to believe that it really is about the owner and not the breed. That being said, dogs with a dangerous bite like pitbulls shouldn't be allowed without proper equipment to keep them from getting loose, or they should have to pass some good behavior test before they reach a certain level of age.

 

Had this discussion with many many people. The fact of the matter is that the only reason to get a pitbull is either due to having a small penis or for "protection". Like all dogs they can be wonderful companions but they are harder to raise than many other dogs but the main problem is that idiots get them. The idiots will always get some dog they can use to make themselves feel big and if pitbulls and their ilk get banned (like tehy are in Denmark) I doubt the amount of deaths will go down just hte name of the top breeds. I am still in favour or banning them though if only to show that it isn't ok and maybe make it a little harder for idiots to wreck their dogs. Also to stop stupid non-dog people getting them cause they are cute with a dangerous edge, when it goes wrong with a pitbull it is dangerous. When it goes wrong with a chiauha (sp?) it is a nuisance.

 

Because lots of animals that "can" cause some damage never do. Golden and Labrador retrievers, the most ubiquitous breeds in this country by far, are responsible for exactly zero of the dog bite fatalities we've had thus far in 2011, zero of the dog bite fatalities we've had in 2010, zero of the dog bite fatalities we had in 2009, zero of the dog bite fatalities we had in 2008, and zero of the dog bite fatalities we had in 2007.

The Labrador Retriever is the most popular breed in the USA by a mile. The Golden Retriever is the fourth. Pit Bulls and Rottweilers don't even make the top ten. Put more simply, a rare breed is responsible for more than half of the dog bite fatalities in this country, while two breeds that are equally capable of killing a human and are more common by several factors are responsible for none of them. Do the math.

Pit Bulls are far more likely to bite, and they are far more likely to kill when they do. If you are suggesting some other breeds should be lumped in with them, I will gladly concede that point. Rottweilers, still a far more common breed than Pit Bulls, are a distant second in this regard. We may want to consider limiting their ownership. The fatality numbers for German Shepherds are more deceiving, though, since they are our second most popular breed. Unless we want to throw (already banned) wolf hybrids into the mix, German Shepherds are a - very - distant third. Nevertheless, limiting their ownership probably wouldn't hurt, either.

You aren't really going there, are you? Don't you feel you're being, oh, maybe just a tad bit ****ing ridiculous here? Even in the gun-loving United States of America, we feel the need to limit gun ownership. Substantially. Last I checked, people haven't been biting each other to death, so I feel confident that I can safely ignore the rest of your post...

Hamsters bite quite a bit more often than pit bulls, but their little mouths are so small they usually can't even draw blood, and I'm fairly confident in saying we've never had a hamster bite fatality. If you aren't going to look at how dangerous a breed actually is when determining which breeds are too dangerous for unregulated ownership, what criterion would you suggest? Tea leaves?

I provided a link to dogsbite.org. You may want to check it out. Short answer -- you're wrong. Many of the Pit Bulls responsible for dog bite fatalities in the US were confirmed to come from loving homes.

 

Shosh,
you ignore that pit bulls were bred precisely for qualities needed down in the fighting pit - for powerful jaws and a strong bite, and for aggressiveness, or gameness. Terriers in general have a higher tendency towards dog aggression; pit bulls even more so. That are qualities absent in other breeds.

I have seen svelte teenage girls leading pit bulls for a walk in my city and I have always had serious reservations about their ability to hold back the dog when it decides to chase for something.

The least thing I think is called for with such dogs is mandatory muzzling and leashing.

 

While I don't know all of the specifics of this case, the only way I could envision a murder charge being appropriate is if the dog's owner instigated the attack on the child. Nothing in the article suggests that the owner intended for the dog to kill someone. If the dog got loose and attacked the child, then it's certainly criminal negligence on the part of the dog's owner, but something like involuntary manslaughter seems like a much more appropriate charge.

What are the rest caused by? I suppose you can beat someone to death with a gun, but I cannot imagine there are many. It would be a better analogy if you could find information showing that a specific type of gun was responsible for more than half of all gun related deaths. If such a gun exists (and I doubt it) it would probably be illegal to own one.

 

In German law, if someone sets his dog to attack another person, then it is a deliberate assault or even murder, since the dog is a dangerous tool i.e. a weapon - it just as if he took a spiked club and mauled the victim himself. If the dog just bites or mauls on his own, then it's usually negligence. Not that it mattered much, since even if he acted diligently, as the owner he is liable for all damage his living property - his dog - causes.

Consequently, under German law in some states dog owners are compelled to insure his dogs for damages it may cause (the idea puts a priority on compensating potential victims). Generally, that's a sensible idea.

 

No, Rags, I agree with you, I know what a pitbull was bread for and I know the physical attributes which make it dangerous.

And I agree, the problem is with people who cannot control their animals.

a lab isnt a good breed for Mr hard nut who wants to train a killing machine.

Wow, you post a link to an anti pitbull website and ~gasp~ they have statistics which prove that the pitbull is a seriously dangerous dog. First of all they dont post any good dog bite statistics, and most dogbite statistics are flawed because they are designed to get the intented result of the study, http://nationalcanineresearchcouncil.com/dogbites/the-problems-with-dog-bite-studies/

as dogbite.org doesnt encompass all of the factors required to a reliable study I say its statistics are created with the purpose of simply 'proving' that pitbulls are monsters.

From my link:

The website claims that pitbulls make up %5 of the dog population but as most putbull fatalities are caused by unlicensed dogs that %5 is unreliable.

so if a professional animal control officer is anything to go by, these dogs are not being kept responsibly, not being properly trained or looked after.

plenty of people bite, to death is irrelevent as the main argument was that pitbulls bite more then other breeds, most bites are not fatal, some are fatal, some arent:

http://www.pattayadailynews.com/en/...ranged-husbands-penis-and-stabs-him-to-death/

http://www.emedicinehealth.com/human_bites/article_em.htm#Human Bites Overview

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/07/woman-jailed-biting-husbands-tongue_n_793325.html

http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/valleyfever/2011/06/police_phoenix_man_bitesbeats.php

http://www.explodingcigar.com/article668.html

http://www.jialat.com/2009/11/19/little-girl-bites-baby-sister-to-death/

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1230757/posts

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-482224/Man-narrowly-escapes-death-pet-hamster-bite.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hereford/worcs/6703451.stm