politics

I took issue with this because pit bull isn’t a breed either. You used a poor word choice, had it pointed out to you and now you’re getting defensive.

I maintain that there is a world of difference between the grouping of breeds commonly referred to as Pitbull and the grouping of literally every single dog that isn't a purebred. You are correct that "Pitbull" doesn't necessarily refer to a specific breed, and I concede that point, I don't however see how that at all negates my point that targeted regulation of the breeding of dangerous, and cruel (see the Pug) breeds is a good practice, let the people who are far more knowledgeable about canine biology than either of us draw the specific lines of how and when that threshold is passed.

My frustration is that you're getting hung up on terminology while bypassing the actual points being made. I acknowledge (again ,because I already did so in my last comment) that when drafting actual legal documents, precise and correct language will be very important. For internet disucssions, a highly common, well understood shorthand for a group of breeds seems perfectly sufficient.

And if your core point is that perfectly docile breeds might be getting lumped in the "pit bull" category on these dog bite studies, let's run some hypothetical numbers on that. Let's say that half of the dogs reported as pitbulls are not actually belonging to any of the breeds known to have a tendency towards violence - because hey, as you point out, some people are stupid and will completely misreport dog breeds. That still makes them 5x more likely to bite than a mixed dog (per the math in my previous comment). Let's say only 20% of the reports accurately describe the attacking dog as a pitbull. Frankly, that's a ludicrously low assertion for the reporting accuracy, but hey - let's be generous. That still makes them 2x more likely to bite than a mixed dog.

If any of those estimates are the case it certainly raises questions about the safety of German shepards, but that's not really a surprise to anyone who knows the breed. Police and military all over the world don't use them as attack dogs for no reason.

I'm specifically talking about pitbulls, because that's what this thread is about, but I don't have anything against pitbulls specifically - I just think that we should be regulating the breeding of dogs more closely to prevent dangerous or cruel breeds from proliferating unchecked. You're welcome to disagree, but unless you have some study to disprove my core point here, I don't see you changing my mind on this point here anytime soon, and I agree with you that this conversation has gone sour, so I'm signing off.