Steel Valley Football;1207186 wrote:If it were up to me, I would never even see a pit. I have no desire to kill anything, let alone in front of my two young children.
Why would "seeing" a pit, even near your children, cause you to need to kill it?
It is sad. Very sad. So are fatal auto accidents with young people driving. Bet I can find more stories on that than you can on pit bull breeds attacking and/or mauling anyone.
Odds have everything to do with safety. When you allow your child to get their license, you're rolling the dice with the fact that they may get into a serious or fatal car accident. It happens at a far higher per capita rate than pits who kill. So many things in life have risks. You have to assess them, and it makes no sense to say that one, isolated risk has nothing to do with the odds when you'll live your life as though the rest do. It's logically inconsistent.
There are 4.5 million registered pit bulls. The average estimates I've seen for non-registered has been between a million and three million. We'll assume low, given that it is the closest I've seen to being in line with the view that the breed is dangerous. That would equate to a total of 5.5 million pit bulls in the United States. In the last ten years, an average of just over five of them are responsible for deaths. That means that if you see a pit bull, there is a 1 in 1.1 MILLION chance that that dog will kill someone over the course of the year. Let's assume that over the course of the year, the pit bull sees no more than 3 people per day (a pretty conservative estimate, I would think). At that rate, a given pit bull would only come into contact with 1,000 people per year. If your child is one such person, that means your child has a 1 in 1.1 BILLION chance of being killed by any given pit bull you see.
And this is somehow seen as a dangerous animal? Logically, that makes no sense, given that we subject our children to activities almost daily that have a higher chance of fatality (riding in a car, for example).
Steel Valley Football;1207202 wrote:I gathered yesterday that he is anti-pit. I barely read in the basement which is why I posted this here. I'm only anti-my-kids-getting-maimed/killed. Sorry to disappoint you, but it's true.
Someone indifferent to pit bulls probably wouldn't say that, if it were up to them, they'd never see a pit. Someone indifferent would say, "If it were up to me, I don't care whether I see a pit or not."
rmolin73;1207207 wrote:Never let them get a drivers license then.
Teen drivers: More dangerous than pit bulls. Especially if you go by the numbers.
Steel Valley Football;1207241 wrote:Each and every one of you would do the exact same thing to protect your young children. Anything else you post is complete BS for the OC gang.
I'd stay close to my child with ANY dog nearby. If the dog showed the slightest sign of being spooked or getting upset, I'm picking my young child up. If the dog so much as scratches my child, the dog will be pulled away, pinned, and my hand will be around its throat (pretty easy to kill a dog by crushing its trachea ... and it doesn't take a minute).
Al Bundy;1207246 wrote:If it is simply about protecting your kids from a dog that might get away from its owner, buy some pepper spray.
Or, you know, don't go where you know that you see dogs roaming free without leashes. It's like the joke about getting killed by bees. If you see a bush with bees buzzing all around it, do you go near the bush? Of course not. That's stupid.
If you see dogs roaming free, do you allow your kids to continue to play in that area, or do you take your kids somewhere else?
This isn't difficult. I would think that if you you have some deep-seeded fear, justified or not, it's not too difficult to avoid the confrontation, rather than try to figure out what to do IN a confrontation.
