The Front Burner: Banning pit bulls saves lives and protects the innocent
Whether to ban pit bulls is a human health and safety issue that should be steered by health and safety officials. Public safety is not the profession of animal advocates. Thus, public policy coming from animal advocates concerning protecting humans from pit bulls is fundamentally flawed.
So far this year, 13 of the 14 Americans who have been killed by dogs — 93 percent — were killed by pit bulls and pit mixes. This is well above the average of 60 percent from 2005 to 2012.
As the pit bull population rises, more human fatalities ensue. During the last eight-year period that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studied fatal attacks by breed (1991 to 1998), pit bulls were estimated at 1 percent of the U.S. dog population. Pit bulls killed an average of three people per year.
The pit bull population has since grown to 4 percent. During the most recent eight-year period (2005-12), pit bulls killed an average of 19 people per year.
Miami-Dade County, which banned pit bulls in 1989, has avoided this loss of life. Other Florida counties — prohibited by state law from regulating dogs by breed — continue to experience deaths and disfigurements due to pit bulls. Since 1989, 18 Florida citizens have been killed by pit bulls — none within Miami-Dade.
The threat from pit bulls results from the combination of the animals' inclination to attack without warning — an essential trait of fighting dogs — and the type of injuries that pit bulls typically inflict.
Most dogs bite and retreat, but pit bulls have a hold-and-shake bite style, and tenaciously refuse to stop an attack once begun.
Often a pit bull releases its grip only when dead — the trait dog fighters describe as being "dead game."
Ban opponents often blame dismembering and fatal attacks on environmental factors, such as neglect. That, unfortunately, is the plight of too many dogs of all breeds, not just those who kill and maim.
Opponents also fail to distinguish dog-bite-injury severity. They argue that bans "do not reduce all dog bites." Of the 4.7 million Americans bitten by dogs each year, 9,500 require hospitalization for severe dog-bite injuries. The most extreme injury level, mauling injury, requires life-saving procedures at trauma centers.
The purpose of a pit bull ban is to eradicate mauling injuries and deaths inflicted by pit bulls, the breed involved in more than half of all severe and mauling attacks.
Since 1986, 18 appellate decisions have upheld lower-court findings that pit bulls are more dangerous than other dog breeds.
Since 1988, four peer-reviewed studies published in leading medical journals have reviewed the severity of pit bull injury. "Mortality, Mauling and Maiming by Vicious Dogs," published in the Annals of Surgery in 2011, concluded the following:
"Attacks by pit bulls are associated with higher morbidity rates, higher hospital charges, and a higher risk of death than are attacks by other breeds of dogs. Strict regulation of pit bulls may substantially reduce the U.S. mortality rates related to dog bites."
In April 2012, the highest court in Maryland declared pit bulls "inherently dangerous," altering common law pertaining to pit bull attacks. Pit bulls are prima facia dangerous in Maryland and held to a strict liability standard. In instances of a tenant's pit bull attacking, this liability extends to the landlord. The court cited the entire abstract of the 2011 Annals of Surgery study in its opinion.
Influential pit bull advocates have supported regulation in the past and are doing so now. On its Facebook page, the Villalobos Rescue Center, founded by Tia Torres of Animal Planet's Pit Bulls & Parolees — expressed support for a proposal in Louisiana on the heels of a mutilating attack on a woman by her own pit bulls.
It is time for Florida pit bull advocacy groups to follow suit.
Colleen Lynn is the founder of DogsBite.org, a national dog-bite victims' group dedicated to reducing serious dog attacks.
wow the lengths they'll go to??
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