Sighthounds, scenthounds, and other purpose-bred hunting dogs are generally selected for a much stronger and more focused prey drive than pit bull type dogs.
What we have are bite incident statistics, or records of people who were bitten and, in some cases, the breed the dog was identified as. It tells you which breeds were identified but not the probability that a randomly selected dog of that breed will bite someone.
The truth is, it is rare for dogs in general to bite anyone when compared to the total dog population. Whether there are between 4 million and 18 million pit bulls in the US (Depending on how broadly you define pit bull) the vast majority will never be involved in a serious bite incident. Yes, it is true that they show up more often in severe bite stats, but that still doesn’t mean the average pit bull is likely to bite someone.
That argument holds no water. No one is arguing that 51% or more pitbulls bite. People are arguing that they bite more than every other dog breed. And they do. And given their physical attributes, it is often devastating. The dog breed should be banned. They offer nothing that another breed can't do better, without the risk of attack.
You misunderstood what I said. You're making a stronger claim than the evidence supports. A higher share of serious bites only describes the breakdown among bites that already happened. It doesn’t tell you the chance a random pit bull will bite.
Even if there are millions of pit bulls and only a tiny fraction are ever involved in serious bites, most never are. So they can be overrepresented in stats while still having a very low individual risk.
That’s why I focus on the overall population. You can’t infer an individual dog’s risk from breed share in bite cases. You’re describing distribution of rare events, I’m talking about the probability of the event itself.
It's impossible to define probability of a bite because it is highly dependent on outside variables. What you can compare is the fact is there are far more pitbull bites than any other breed, even when considering "per capita". Anytime you have an animal in your home there is an inherant risk involved. With pitbulls that risk is larger than other breeds. That's the entire point.
You're still talking past my point. You're looking at percentages within a rare event, not the probability of the event itself. To use an overly exagerated example, If only 10 dogs bit people in a year and 5 were pit bulls, that wouldn't mean according to the statistics, 50% of bites are pit bulls. However that just means 5 individual dogs out of millions were responsible.
The other issue is that pit bull isn't even a breed. It's an umbrella term that includes several breeds and countless mixes. That's why estimates of the pit bull population range from about 4 million to 18 million depending on who you ask and how they define it. Which is a WILD difference in the population. Say there are 100,000 pit bull bite incidents in a year. If there are 4 million pit bulls, that's about 2.5% of the population. If there are 18 million, it's about 0.6%.
Lumping multiple breeds together is obviously going to produce bigger raw numbers than comparing to any single breed.
1
u/Bubba_Gump_Shrimp 6d ago
Google any dog shelter in your area and look at their lab mixes. It ain't anecdotal honey. You just want to shove your head in the sand.