Posted on 08/28/2010 7:42:34 PM PDT by Brad’s Gramma
Oh, yes, it’s an evil STUDY. Much better to base an argument on the “killer coconuts” that have no basis in reality.
Not evil, just deeply flawed.
I read the blog, and will note here the most obvious problem with the blog. They rightly note that the study clearly indicates that it only covers a small percentage of all dog bites, namely those that are reported, and for which breeds are identified by people who have the training and education to do so.
Then, they also correctly point out that popular information suggests that there are many more bites than what are contained in the report -- not surprising since the report said it was a subset.
But then they attempt to take the numbers from the report, treat them as complete (for pit bulls), and use them in a numerator where the denominator is the total popular reported bite count:
If Clifton’s pit bull numbers are correct, and no more than 49 of the 6,000 or so hospitalizations due to severe dog bites in the U.S. each year are a result of pit bull bites or attacks, then pit bulls and pit mixes are responsible for less than one percent of those hospitalizations.That's not even a clever deception, it's just silly.
The main argument seems to be that we simply don't have a good database of dog bites, and therefore pit bulls can't be worse than others.
Which begs the question -- if you argue that there is no accurate information, how could you possibly KNOW that pit bulls were no worse than others?
But if you treat the clifton study as a sample of the whole, the question isn't whether it's the whole, it's whether their sampling method has any rational basis, and if so, what the sample error might be.
Unfortunately, the blogger didn't directly deal with that, at least not in a methodical way:
Clifton’s report never mentions that there is a huge discrepancy between actual hospital records and press accounts of dog attacks --- between relatively objective data, in other words, and highly subjective reporting and editing with an eye to selling papers.
Why would the hospital records contain accurate reports of the actual breed type for a dog bite? I presume at some point the police would have the dog, and there might well be a rabies test, but there's no reason to believe a hospital would be any more likely to bring a dog breed expert and include their conclusions in hospital records (which are about human injuries).
In fact, I'd guess the police reports would actually be a better source than hospital records; the police would be more likely to get a dog expert, not necessarily to get breed, but because they might have to have the dog examined for disease and to have them evaluated.
Moreso, police reports would be public records, so we should be able to get them for all reported dog bites.
Of course, that's what newspapers do -- they get police reports, and report what those reports say. Yes, we all know media sucks, but their JOB is to get accurate information and report on criminal activity, which would include dog bites.
Lastly, they argue that pit bulls are the "most popular breed" in the country, based on an extremely small sample of dogs IN SHELTERS:
This might be a good place to mention that the pit bull is one of the most popular breeds [or types] in the country. Using shelter numbers as a very rough means of estimating the number of pit bulls [registered and unregistered] in the general population, even low estimates end up in the millions. A board member of the California Animal Control Directors Association [CACDA] told me in 2005 that only labs and lab mixes are more common in California shelters. On sites like this, out of a total U.S. population of over 70 million dogs you’ll find estimates of 3 million to 10 million pit bulls.Completely ignoring that dogs in shelters are NOT an accurate reflection of the dog population, and that a common reason for a dog to be in a pen is that a person bought the dog, but the dog was untrainable, or too violent to keep around. You might actually argue that the high numbers in shelters supports the "too violent" theory.
Worse, taking their UPPER LIMIT (10 million) and accepting their total number (70 million), pits would make up less than 20% of the total, NOT a majority (yes, they said "most popular", but that's meaningless when comparing actual numbers, and it's clear they wanted to suggest that the reported deaths and maimings could be explained by popularity).
To remind people, the clifton report suggested 40% of the deaths were caused by pit bulls, which even in the flawed logic of the blog make up only 16% of the population of dogs.
I'm not one to jump in the middle of a dog fight, but for my .02 cents, I'd rather get killed by falling coconuts than mauled by a dog...
Anecdotal means it is a report that, since it wasn’t part of a controlled study, cannot be used to indicate probability.
Of course, I didn’t use the story to indicate probability, merely to note that there is a “risk/reward” equation, that it isn’t just pit bull owners that are being inconvenienced, and that the argument against pit bulls includes other dog owners who, because some people are allowed to own pit bulls, have lost their dogs.
Your distraction about guns is meaningless as I noted before, since gun ownership is a right guaranteed by the constitution, while dog ownership is not. Also, guns are used by people to commit crimes, and so banning guns won’t eliminate the threat.
But banning ownership of pit bulls is highly effective. It is hard to HIDE the ownership of a pit bull, unless you keep them indoors — in which case they aren’t going to harm anybody. And for the neighborhoods we are talking about, criminals aren’t going to bring pit bulls to randomly attack children (yes, it is possible a crazy person could bring a pit bull somewhere to attack children, but hardly something we think of as an ordinary risk).
Your aversion to risk/reward is irrational, since an entire class of laws involves risk/reward analysis. Why do you think you can’t drive your car 100 mph on a residential street? Obviously, this is an infringement of your rights. But we make it illegal because you might run over some kid playing in the street.
So, why is it that you support a ban on people speeding past your children, but think it is fascist for another parent to consider banning a dangerous dog from possibly harming their children?
The sane people will have to do risk/reward analysis, to determine if there really is a risk attributable to pit bulls, and weigh that risk against the reward of owning one.
The reason I leave that to others is not that I’m passive-aggresive, it’s because I, (unlike apparently you), don’t pretend to know whether pit bulls are actually more dangerous than other dogs, much less whether they are dangerous enough that banning or other restrictions should be considered.
Do you think it is fascist to have to put a collar on your dog to walk them? To pick up their poop? To be required to have a fence if you let your dog out in your yard? Do you think only stinking, passive-aggressive control freaks force you to get a rabies vaccination for your dog?
How do you ever decide what laws are sensible, and which are the result of Hitler incarnate?
The main argument seems to be that we simply don't have a good database of dog bites, and therefore pit bulls can't be worse than others.
We don't have a database, so it can't be proven, no matter how many reports are published by virulently anti-domestic animal activists. Have you ever looked into Merritt Clifton? He's a real nutbag.
In fact, I'd guess the police reports would actually be a better source than hospital records; the police would be more likely to get a dog expert...
These would be the experts that regularly identify Rhodesian Ridgebacks, Mastiffs, Bulldogs and occasionally labradors as 'pit bulls'?
Of course, that's what newspapers do -- they get police reports, and report what those reports say. Yes, we all know media sucks, but their JOB is to get accurate information and report on criminal activity, which would include dog bites.
No, their JOB is to sell papers, or hold viewers attention through the commercial. That's what they actually get paid for; 'reporting' and 'information' are purely optional by-products.
Completely ignoring that dogs in shelters are NOT an accurate reflection of the dog population, and that a common reason for a dog to be in a pen is that a person bought the dog, but the dog was untrainable, or too violent to keep around.
I'm glad people in your area use the shelters responsibly. Many of the owner-surrenders here are abandoned because of 'allergies', 'having a baby', 'leaving for college', 'got bigger than we expected', 'can't give him the time he deserves', etc etc etc.
rse, taking their UPPER LIMIT (10 million) and accepting their total number (70 million), pits would make up less than 20% of the total, NOT a majority (yes, they said "most popular", but that's meaningless when comparing actual numbers, and it's clear they wanted to suggest that the reported deaths and maimings could be explained by popularity).
To remind people, the clifton report suggested 40% of the deaths were caused by pit bulls, which even in the flawed logic of the blog make up only 16% of the population of dogs.
And if 90% of those dogs are owned by uncaring bastards, do you think that might affect the bite statistics? Just curious about that one, since it's hard to get people to register as Uncaring Bastards. :-)
Ah, a fellow humanitarian! I trust you support my campaign to ban hot dogs. It's for the children.
While hard candies, popcorn, nuts, grapes and chewing gum are all potential problems, hot dogs cause more choking deaths than any other food.
http://wbztv.com/local/choking.hazards.food.2.1511024.html
What people don't realize is that hot dogs are EVERYWHERE! Not just in your home, but in the schools, day care centers, arcades, amusement parks, beaches...Anywhere children are, the dreaded hot dog can be found. It's time to end the hot dog's reign of terror! Join with me in trampling the freedom of the individual for the sake of the children! No pleasure recieved from a hot dog outweighs the safety of our young ones!!
There does seem to be one line of argument that says yes, pit bulls kill and maim more than others, but not because of the dog, but because of the owners.
That argument may be meritous, I don’t have enough facts to know. But the argument is irrelevant. If we presume as that argument seems to that pit bulls are attacking more than other breeds, and we know the attacks are in neighborhoods where children live, it really makes no difference to the mained and killed whether the reason is because the dog is inherently dangerous, or whether the reason is that the dog is more likely to be owned by degenerates.
However, given that in a good number of the televised cases, the owners don’t appear to be degenerates, I’m not sure I’d accept this argument without some sort of study. I’m just saying that if this argument is true, banning pit bulls will STILL prevent the maiming and death.
if we can’t prove pit bulls are more dangerous, we also can’t prove that they are not more dangerous. And I still don’t understand why people who oppose animal ownership would be arguing that most dogs are safer than pit bulls — if I wanted to end dog ownership, I’d be taking the pro-pit-bull side’s argument — “Pit bulls kill people, but so do every either dog — they are all just as dangerous as pit bulls, so we should ban all dog ownership, to protect our children”.
How exactly is the “anti-ownership” side advanced by an argument that only a couple of breeds are actually dangerous?
As to experts, I don’t know how one becomes an animal expert, or why people who have degrees that would suggest they know things would misidentify breeds of dogs.
How? How will a ban on pit bulls be any more effective than a ban on alcohol, radar scanners, fatty foods or hate speech?
And I still don’t understand why people who oppose animal ownership would be arguing that most dogs are safer than pit bulls — if I wanted to end dog ownership, I’d be taking the pro-pit-bull side’s argument — “Pit bulls kill people, but so do every either dog — they are all just as dangerous as pit bulls, so we should ban all dog ownership, to protect our children”. How exactly is the “anti-ownership” side advanced by an argument that only a couple of breeds are actually dangerous?
Because if they can get you panicked enough to invite the government's regulation of one breed...one 'dangerous' breed...they know that you can't very well argue that pits are dangerous and rottweilers are not, right? Heck, mastiffs have been bred for hundreds of years to attack human poachers, and a 150lb mastiff can do a lot more damage than a 60lb pit. And German Shepherds have been specialized for police work for many generations now...Pretty dangerous to have a dog like that around your children. Bull dogs, rhodesian ridgebacks, high-strung labradors, malamutes, they've all attacked. Australian Cattle Dogs are at the top of the list for attacks in Australia, so they're probably just as dangerous here in the USA. And as long as we're being protective, Cocker Spaniels have VERY high bite statistics! Sure, they may not be able to kill a kid, but do you really want even one child living with the heartbreak of permanent disfigurement? It's only one more breed, and isn't peace of mind worth it? Besides, you don't even own a Cocker Spaniel! It's not going to affect you any...
And if you think this could never happen, take a moment to meditate on low-flow toilets, CFL bulbs, and Cap&Trade. Think those things are totally unrelated?
My argument with the other poster wasn’t about choosing specific things and deciding to ban them.
It was about the generic reaction to suggesting that something could be banned if it was found to be hazardous, even if it also had some benefits.
Remember, I’m here to point out that the coconut argument was fallacious and silly. I’m not here to support banning pit bulls. But I also don’t think it is dictatorial to consider banning pit bulls, any more than any of our laws are dictatorial.
Our nation is founded on the principles of liberty, but government does have an assigned duty to, at some level, protect citizens from certain harms that come from others.
Law weighs the protection of some people against the inconvenience to others; the rights of one person to life or safety against the rights of others to liberty and happiness.
It is why we have speed limit laws — someone weighed the liberty of a person against the life/safety of others, and decided that liberty would be curtailed to a certain speed. Note that nobody would be killed if cars were banned, and then the opportunity for death/injury increases as you allow cars and increase the speed they can drive.
Why 25 on some road, and not 30, or 35, or 50? In every case, someone decides; we hope it’s based on some measurement of risk/reward, but mostly it’s a cookie-cutter formula. Some people could drive over the limit and never hurt anyone. In a perfect world, people would be allowed to drive any speed they wanted so long as it didn’t hurt anyone, but since that would lead to people being killed/injured before government could act, it has become an unacceptable method of controlling behavior. In that perfect world, watching people get punished would make sensible people behave better, but deterrence has not been the rule in legal circles for a while. We pass laws to protect people directly.
That’s why we have drunk driving laws, rather than just harsh penalties for those who hurt people while driving drunk. It’s why we have speed limits; why we restrict the sale of medications, why we have all sorts of laws that restrict our liberty simply to lower the possibility of others being harmed.
I’m not defending or attacking these types of laws here — I’m saying that if a person argues that only a fascist dictator would ban ownership of a dog simply to lessen the chance of others being hurt, that person is a hypocrit if they don’t also argue against the speed limit laws, because those laws also limit our liberty and freedom simply to lessen the probability of others being hurt.
Only an anarchist can in good conscious argue that the government has no right to limit anything a person might want to do simply because the person’s actions increase the risk of harm to others. The rest of us have long since accepted that government passes laws like this all the time.
In the end, we need to do a risk/reward analysis, to decide whether any particular action can or should be banned (that is, when the constitution doesn’t specifically prevent the government from action, as is the case with banning guns).
We don’t ban hot dogs because millions of people love them. We don’t ban pools because the reward of being able to swim outweighs that certain death of random children by drowning. We don’t ban cars even though they kill up to 50,000 people a year. But I am pretty sure someone has been looking at the risk/reward of hot dogs.
As a last point, I will note that I can completely protect myself from the risk of choking to death on a hot dog, by NOT EATING A HOT DOG. So in the end, I would argue that government should not be banning things that are a danger only to myself, in which I can freely choose to accept the risk.
If it is shown that pit bulls are a dangerous breed of dog which will attack children without provocation or warning, and without the owner ever knowing the attack is possible, then the danger of a pit bull attack is not something I can reasonable protect my children from, other than by making sure they don’t go NEAR pit bulls.
The question is, how does a parent ensure a pit bull never comes near their child?
It is a lot easier to ban the ownership of a dog than any of the other things you listed. How would you hide the ownership of a pit bull? First, a person would have to find someone selling a pit bull illegally. Sure, criminals could still buy the dogs from other criminals, but the issue here isn't street thugs, it's the random neighbors whose dogs aren't dangerous, until one day they kill someone. Most people won't break the law and seek out criminals to purchase a dog.
And once you have the dog, how do you hide ownership of a dog? Well, you could do so by keeping the dog inside all the time -- but frankly, that would solve the problem, because if the dog is in your house, it can't kill my children. In fact, if it didn't seem cruel to the dog, one could argue that instead of banning the dog, just make it illegal to allow the dogs outside the house.
The problem with the slippery-slope argument is that government already bans ownership of animals it deems dangerous. The precedent is already set. If it was proven that pit bulls were in fact a dangerous breed with no redeeming qualities, a vast majority of people would be happy to let government ban ownership. You wouldn't be breaking down any barriers of existing jurisprudence.
However, the pro-pit-bull argument goes a long way to encouraging people to ban all dogs, or at least most dogs. Because if all dogs can kill kids without reason, and all are equally dangerous, why not allow neighborhoods to ban dogs, to keep their children safe?
I support arguments that discuss whether pit bulls are in fact dangerous or not. I don't think arguing that government has no business banning dangerous animals is a rational argument -- I expect government to take actions to protect my private property rights from acts of others that clearly threaten my life, liberty, and use of my property.
Which again is why I came to this thread, to note that the coconut argument was silly and fallacious.
Sure, you can choose not to eat a hot dog, but what about your child? How will they know the danger? It could be Served up at the school cafeteria, Grandma's house, or Six Flags. People and institutions they trust allow them access to hot dogs. What if your toddler finds a piece of hot dog on the ground at the park and stuffs it in his mouth before you can get it away from him? You can't pretend that simply not owning any hot dogs will keep your children safe; do you think that it's any comfort to the parents of hot dog victims, knowing that you're exercising your personal judgement and eschewing hot dogs? No! We must eliminate the problem at the source. A government ban will ensure that no hot dogs exist, therefore removing the danger.
The question is, how does a parent ensure a pit bull never comes near their child?
However they like; Seal them in a locked room and slide food(not hot dogs!) under the door, if that's what they want. A better idea would be to carry their firearm around with them and just remove the dogs as they enter the property.
Shocking online video of girl throwing live puppies into river sparks anger, death threats
The kids have to carry the firearm to kill the dog. I think that would solve all the problems. :-)
What domesticated animal has the government banned? Please give me an example.
And before you say ‘lions and tigers’, please consider that although there are federal laws restricting international trafficing, in many places (most, if the WWF is to be believed) there are no restrictions on privately owned tigers.
And this means what, exactly? You think I’m going to freak out over some puppies getting thrown in the water? I’ve seen kitties drowned by the sackful, it’s not going to make me cry.
I’m more creeped out by your obsessive hatred of pets.
I bet your house smells like crap, your friends and family won’t say it, but I can tell from your FR profile that it does ...
Oh, one more thing, I don’t hate pets, I don’t want to be around them, have never ever harmed one, but would like to see pit bulls eliminated, along with a good portion of the population.
There are also bans based on animals being in the wrong places (no natural predators), or because they are nuisances (certain farm animals in areas zoned residential).
New York City I believed banned Ferrets.
A majority of states have at least some bans on ownership of exotic or non-native animals. From an article about a group pushing Governor Strickland to ban ownership of bears: "Ohio is one of 20 states that has no law prohibiting private ownership of dangerous, non-native animals. It is one of the top two states for exotic animals sales and auctions."
Here's a site I haven't verified that lists exotic animal bans and restrictions in the United States. If the list is correct, it does appear that many states DO ban the ownership of tigers, although certainly not all.
I think it is clear that there are many laws in many states that already restrict the ownership of pets, including banning different types of animals. Banning pit bulls would not be something "new" for most localities, just an application of legal jurisprudence they already have employed.
BTW, I can say clearly that I oppose a federal ban on pit bulls. The federal government has no business telling people what they can own. This is a state/local issue, and each state/locality needs to make their own decision.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.