Pit bulls are too dangerous to be pets and need to be banned to protect children.

I will address the resolution with two key points, the Utility (and hypocrisy of suggesting such a ban) and the Rights (this will sub divide into both owner rights animal rights). With that said, let us begin. == Utility == Let us remember that the purpose of the ban is “for safety. ” For us to be able to measure the impact, we need to understand the scope of what we are talking about. My opponent has stated that Pit Bulls are the most dangerous dog breed. This is true, but what does this mean? Being the most dangerous breed of dog is like being the most dangerous breed of hamster. You are still on an incredibly safe list. Let us look at the facts. Pit Bulls killed 27 people last year [1]. However, things like falling down the stairs kills over 1,300 and drowning in a bath-tub over 300 [2]. If my opponent is going to be consistent in their line of reasoning of banning for safety, then they must support banning stairs and bath tubs. We can conclude from this, that such a line of reasoning is ridiculous (this argument is known as reduction to absurdity). However, we can take it one step further. Various studies show that the Pit Bull population is between 5% and 10% of the entire US dog population [3][4] (I’ve included two sources that show the populations in this range, each source is arguing the other side of this debate, so it cannot be stated that the pop% is bias). The US dog population was 83.3 million in 2012 [5], the most recent numbers we have. If we take the bottom number for Pit Bulls, we find that there are 4.17 million Pit Bulls in the USA. And they accounted for only 27 deaths last year. That gives them a murder rate of 0.65 per 100,000. However, African Americans committed 2,698 murders in 2013 [6]. This gives them a murder rate of 6.47 per 100,000, making them 10 times more likely to kill a person than a Pit Bull. Now, before anyone jumps up saying this proves we need to ban all African Americans, we should note that the White murder rate is 1.23 per 100,000, almost twice the Pit Bull murder rate. We can conclude that Humans of almost all races (at least the races that make up 85% of the US population) are a bigger threat to themselves than Pit Bulls. From this (once again, Reduction ad Absurdum) we can conclude that it is ridiculous to ban Pit Bulls on the grounds of “safety. ” == Animal Rights == Believe it or not, Pit Bulls are living creatures with functioning brains and they experience emotions, including love [7]. My opponent is talking about banning 4.17 million dogs, because of the actions of 27. Telling 4.17 million living, loving, emoting things that they do not get to exist for nothing that they have ever done. I am all for different animals being held to different behavioral standards, with different punishments (a serious dog bite should cost the dog its life, while that should not be the case for humans). However, in every case, the animal ought to have the right to be left alone until they commit a violation. == Owner Rights == Let’s say that we don’t accept that animals have any rights, only humans do. In which case, dogs are merely the property of their owners. The confiscation of someone’s property, when no rights of others were infringed or harmed, is a violation of the most basic property rights laid out by John Locke [8]. A violation of this is an action of tyranny. My opponent’s arguments bring up a number of emotional appeals and his only source is nothing more than a list of deaths and pictures designed to appeal to emotions. However, do little to put anything in perspective. There are a number of issues that we can take with his arguments and lack of meaningful sources. My opponent states that attacks are up 770% over 5 years (with no source), however, his one source that makes no arguments, only lists off the dead, we can count up all those that died and the year stated that they died and find that 4 years ago, in 2010 we had 22 deaths, so there is only a 22.7% increase since 2010 by my opponent’s own (and only) source. It can also be noted that so far in 2015, we only have 6 deaths, whereas by this point last year, we were at 9 deaths. I will pass this back to my opponent and let them respond. Thank you [1] . http://www.dogsbite.org... [2] . http://danger.mongabay.com... [3] . http://defendpitbulls.com... [4] . http://defendpitbulls.com... [5] . http://www.humanesociety.org... [6] . http://www.fbi.gov... [7] . https://www.psychologytoday.com... [8] . http://plato.stanford.edu...;