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there is something in the genetic makeup of pit bulls that makes them prone to vicious behavior

I would agree with that. People should think about animal breeding and what that means.

Go back 100 years -- were horses fast? Well, yeah ... but not as fast as today. We've bred thoroughbreds to be very, very fast. The downside is that they tend to be fragile. Maybe not all thoroughbreds are fragile, but there are many examples of top horses that were very fast and damaged themselves because of it. We bred the horses to be fast and we have to accept the downside.

Pit bulls are the same way. Were they dangerous 100 years ago? Well, yeah: they were capable of handling bulls ... but they weren't as crazy as they are today. Pit bulls became a very popular breed, in part, because unsavory people liked 'em. They were bred fast (always a bad thing) and they were (often) bred because they were relentlessly violent. Some people liked them that way.

Not all thoroughbreds are fragile.
Not all pit bulls are crazy.

But you have to look at the intentional breeding, and you have to recognize that the genetic predisposition in 2014 is that the same as the genetic predisposition in 1900.

[P-Marlowe:] there is something in the genetic makeup of pit bulls that makes them prone to vicious behavior

I would agree with that. People should think about animal breeding and what that means.

I would firmly disagree.

Animal husbandry cannot measurably change a breed in a mere hundred years. Such a thing would necessarily, by means of inbreeding, cause weakness and collapse of the breed - ex: German Shepherds whose inbreeding has notoriously caused hip displaysia to become commonplace. American German Shepherds are almost gone, as breeders hearken back to the German Alsatian lines to fix the problem.

I have seen, in my lifetime, the very same accusation against Dobermans, Rottweilers, and German Shepherds. ALL dogs have a pack mentality. ALL dogs have a kill switch. ALWAYS the hardest thing to train into a dog is a verbal override - The ability to call the dog off of an attack, and more problematic, off of a kill. This is a matter of poor training. Period.