A few thoughts Before even attempting to approach this subject folks should consider a few things Where do bite statistics come from As in expert analysis and DNA testing or by gum officer it wuz one a them pit bullys The CDC can collect statistics all day but if the underlying data is provided by uninformed untrained eye witnesses it won t amount to a hill of beans Hysteria really does happen Look up satanic ritual abuse even here on Wikipedia I remember when that flap came to my town People totally up in arms about something for which there hasn t been a single shred of evidence Lives were ruined millions spent in cases such as the McMartin pre school circus trial and there simply was no there there Far as dogs go I m old enough to remember when The Big Scary Bad Dog That ll Eat Your Children was the German Shepard Same stories different breed Everybody had statistics and he turned on me for no reason stories Then for a while it was the Rottweiler And for a while the Doberman had his turn Notice however it s never the big fluffy pretty dogs with the big brown eyes despite the fact that Chows tend to be exceedingly temperamental and I d never own one again myself I ll take a pit over a Chow any day Hysteria sells papers There may be a killer in your home right now Details at 11 Come on people the boogeyman gets ratings and sells papers Do you really expect to see many articles or TV news stories of You probably shouldn t own a dog because you don t care enough to educate yourself on how to properly socialize and train a dog nor do you have the sense to realize dogs aren t stuffed animals Yeah our media could bother to do some real education but it s more profitable to scare people into hiking their skirts and running around shrieking in terror for details see the current US administration Dogs don t get to testify in court As in do you really believe a dog owner is going to tell the police well I was giving the dog his daily beating when for no reason at all he turned on me We have no way to verify the stories I take all the dog turned on me for no reason stories with a grain of salt At least until we have some way of getting the dog s side of the story Temperament testing As in here The ATTS gives the American Pit Bull Terrier a rating of 84 1 The Golden Retriever obtains 83 8 So where are all the stories of Golden Retrievers unexpectedly turning on their owners Or assaulting people left and right Why aren t they being banned Because they re pretty The Cocker Spaniel obtains 81 7 but they re pretty too so they must not attack people The Collie 79 2 In short Lassie is more likely to attack you than a Pit Sometimes the bias really is on the other side I see a lot of hand waving here about the bias of the article but nobody stops to consider that fair and balanced can be taken to such an extreme that it entails destroying the truth Sometimes people really are full of horse droppings and to try to balance reality is to do harm And balance with what Urban legend Yellow journalism Self reported statistics that nobody bothers to verify Your neighbor is a bigger risk to you than his dog Yes I own pits Both rescue dogs One was abused by his first owner And frankly I like my dogs better than I like most of you My dogs don t get addicted to crack and try to break into someone s house unlike some neighbors I ve had Dogs aren t that complicated nor that hard to socialize and train if you bother to realize that they are actual living beings and not something to compliment the drapes My Pits are loyal affectionate well behaved dogs Even the one that had to be rescued from an abusive owner That one took actual effort heaven forbid work to socialize after being traumatized by his first owner Today he s the most affectionate playful well behaved dogs I ve ever owned We don t have a breed specific problem we have a human problem As in stupid small minded ignorant people who want a dog as a toy or decoration Such as my alcoholic irresponsible mooching off his mother former neighbor that wanted a tough dog when he shouldn t have been allowed anywhere near a dog Worse still he has a kid That ll turn out well He was a classic example of the kind of person that was going to show up in the news one day saying The dog turned on me for no reason When the truth was the dog would