1. IANAL, but I have to think that broadcasting clear premeditated intentions to destroy or damage property and use deadly force is not he best legal strategy should such a scenario ever arise.

   Idk man, I’m sure I can compile a killed and maimed list that includes other breeds. Or a list of people maimed and killed by “assault weapons”. It’s not a very convincing argument to me.

   2nd amendment related now, would not or could not a dog fall under arms?

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2. Amen Jk.B Amen.

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3. If your p̶i̶t̶ ̶b̶u̶l̶l̶ dog gets away from you on its lead and starts h̶e̶a̶d̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶o̶w̶a̶r̶d̶s̶ threatening me, or my kids, or my dogs, or anybody else’s kids, I am going to shoot it

   FIFY

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4. Mr. JkB: Broadly, I agree with you. Particularly, regarding Chuck’s edit, if I can discern a clear and present danger of death or severe injury, I will act to avert that threat. Ideally, nobody gets hurt. If I am not allowed the time for the former outcome, well, Goal One is that nobody on My Team gets hurt. But, as you articulated, there is a reasonable trigger for vigilance in the presence of particular circumstances, among them a pit bull, especially when said dog is acting aggressively.

   Regarding the dog on dog threat, well, The Darling Wife loves her dogs, and is a better shot than I. And, once the aggressor dog is done with our dogs, on what basis do I reasonably assume that the aggressor dog will not come after me?

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   1. Yes, if ANY dog attacked – as in was going to cause physical harm – me or my children I would defend myself or them.

      The difference is, as I said, the benefit of the doubt. I had a Chihuahua run up to me and bite my ankle. I didn’t feel like I was at risk of grave bodily harm from that. I’ve had yellow labs and other “family breeds” run up to me and stop and bark. Again, I didn’t feel fear of grave bodily harm.

      Knowing the history of pit bulls, I am not going to wait to see if it charges me because it wants belly scratches.

      My benefit of the doubt for “is this dog going to hurt me or just make a lot of noise at me” varies by breed. Of course a doberman will have a lower threshold of doubt than a beagle. With pit bulls, that threshold is zero.

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5. We recently had an incident here in Idaho where two pit bulls attacked a woman’s dog (on a leash I believe). She tried to intervene and was badly mauled. Some local idiots have started a petition to save the pit bulls from being euthanized. I simply can’t fathom the degree of idiocy these folks display. I don’t like to see any dog put down, but these dogs have demonstrated hyper aggressive behavior and have ATTACKED a human. Keeping these dogs alive is a public safety menace.

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   1. When I was a kid in the fifties, it was automatic to (as they said then) “destroy” any dog that attacked a human. Right away. No ifs, ands, or buts.

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6. This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of dog behavior. Are some breeds more likely to develop aggressive behavior? Yes they are. Does this mean we get to treat every member of that bread as if it were aggressive? No it does not.

   Consider the following:

   Shooting a tan skinned individual holding a weapon and yelling “ALLAH AKBAR!” at the mall is justified.

   Shooting a tan skinned individual buying overpriced products at a mall kiosk is not, no matter what your prejudices are. It does not matter that you can point to hundreds or thousands of articles of tan skinned people killing others for no reason. His behavior is benign, and therefor cannot justify a shoot.

   Same with dogs. There is no justification to shoot a docile, well behaved dog no matter what the breed, even if that dog is wandering free at the moment. If you cannot tell the difference you should not be shooting animals except for the most obvious of circumstances. To go back to the earlier analogy you have not demonstrated you can tell the difference between the two tan skinned individuals above.

   You have just broadcast to the entire internet that you intend to use a prejudice instead of a behavior to justify a shoot. That is not a good idea, and the heat you are getting over it is more than justified. Most of us do not (and will not) defend you should you get into an awkward and unjustified shoot of an animal. We are not going to defend the “I felt threatened; it was a pitbull!” justification, and we are not going to appreciate all gun owners being painted as trigger happy psychos based on a bad shoot.

   You are the one pulling the trigger; it is incumbent on you to learn how to identify problem behavior and take appropriate action (for any situation, not just animal interactions). A shot on a dog (any dog, regardless of breed) is not justified until signs of unwanted and dangerous behavior are manifest. Sure, if that individual has clearly shown bad behavior in the past shoot-on-sight is justified, but that too is founded upon facts independent of breed. That is not the argument you are making, and that is why you are experiencing backlash. One can only hope that you use a better evaluation method when dealing with other shoot/no-shoot situations.

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7. Yes but these pit bulls are peaceful dogs and coming here and biting people(that other dogs didnt want to bite)was an act of love……heh heh heh
   Well said Sir. We dont see too many Shiutzus biting people….

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8. It sounds like what you’re selling as rationale is actually just fear and hate.

   First of all, the cherry-picked stories to demonstrate the “bloody-shirt waving” reminds me all to much of what the anti-gunners do to support a emotionally based, failure of a position. Showing a bunch of bloodied pictures of victims is not going to cause me to surrender my guns, nor will it cause me to surrender my dog.

   I am not responsible for that blood, until it is me that directly spilled it. Neither is my dog. Don’t conflate action with potential, because potential without action is simply imagination, and in this case that imagination spurs fear.

   Killing a dog that is lost, simply because of its breed? Without actionable provocation? Anybody who feels justified killing in this manner is somebody I don’t feel is mentally or emotionally stable enough to possess firearms. But then add to that a claim to shoot the owner of the now dead/dying dog because they are upset? That is downright villainous and evil.

   If your rationale is sound and consistent, do you feel the same toward black people as you do with pit bulls? Because blacks are also disproportionately responsible for violence, and associated with crime. And also operate in gangs.

   That doesn’t mean every black person you encounter is even remotely associated with those things. Statistics alone are not enough justification to evince the response you envision for pit bulls. Nor is conflating the potential of action with action itself to justify your violent predispositions. The KKK tried to use this kind of logic to justify unjust action.

   The bottom line is, dogs who have a individual precedence of violence/attacks and the capability of doing great harm should be put down. Period.

   But dogs with NO violent individual history and simply the capability of doing great harm?

   I would equate those to people that carry guns: typically law abiding and non-violent, with potential to do great harm.

   Only after an actionable demonstration of aggression or negligence will I ever support removing someones gun rights, and in that same vein of thought, I will only ever support euthanasia of a dog after an act of aggression. Regardless of their race or breed.

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9. I volunteer at an animal shelter and pit bulls always cause me headaches. We are a ‘no-kill’ shelter which just means that we don’t kill the animals we have just because they have been here for X months. We DO put down animals that are aggressive or beyond reasonable medical care. (the board and I differ wildly on what is ‘reasonable’ medical care, but that is a different story) We also don’t always get to choose the dogs we have available for adoption. Sometimes all we have are pit-mixes.

   I will credit my shelter with one thing at least. We don’t adopt out ANY of the pit mixes to families that have small kids. We are also pretty quick to pull the trigger on the ‘aggressive’ part if they exhibit any of that while in our care. We also do extensive background checks as best we can. Just a few days ago we reached 15,000 adoptions (of dogs and cats) in 10 years for an all volunteer-based organization. I went back and tried to see how many of those were pit mixes but our older records are not that easily accessible to me. This last year we adopted out 1479 animals with 149 of them being pit mixes of some sort. We have also put down almost 50 that were deemed too aggressive to adopt. To date we have had no recorded incident of violence from the ones we adopted out.

   I feel both sides of this issue here. I love animals in general but there are way too many pit bulls that just have bad blood in them. I will not adopt one. I will not let anyone with small kids adopt one. And I myself refuse to take any of them with us when we do outside events. I am not going to shoot one just because i see it but if one starts to run at me and I don’t know it, it is going down.

   1. You are correct to not allow people with kids to adopt this aggressive breed. However, there are a lot of kids out there: friends of the family, relatives, neighbors, etc., and you can’t guarantee that those dogs will not come in contact with kids. Hell, even the most “lovable” dog can be aggressive on occasion — why take a chance on a dog that was bred to fight in a “dog pit?” I question the need for this breed to continue to be acceptable. AKC or whoever should discontinue this breed. And I recommend not adopting any of them out of your shelter.

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      1. Alas, I do not get to make such decisions and we do not always get to decide which dogs we take in. While 90% of our ‘income’ is from donations and adoption fees, the other 10% come with strings such as taking overflow from the county when we have room. I CAN decide which ones I take with to events and I do not take pits/mixes. And we do make it difficult to adopt the pits with a bunch of extra paperwork to sign and disclosure notices that we often do not know the history of this specific dog but hey, here is the history of this specific breed.

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         1. Good work. You are doing the best you can under the circumstances. Thanks for clearing up some misconceptions that I had.

10. Displaying disturbing injuries of people attacked by pit bulls doesn’t necessarily aid your cause. Straight out of the gun controller handbook to point to a victim and say, “If it saves just one life”. Am I aware that people have tortured Pit Bulls to make them hyper-aggressive? Yes. Does that justify putting down EVERY dog of a specific breed? No. There is a woman in my area who rescues Rottweilers who been trained to fight and/or attack. I notice you make no mention of that breed. Perhaps Rottweilers aren’t used in such a manner in Miami, but I think it more likely you haven’t noticed.

    Your biases are clearly on display, but I understand what you previously wrote. You say criminals in Miami are the only people who own Pit Bulls, and do so for nefarious purposes. In your specific area, I can see how your views could be justified.

    However, you should be careful not to carry your attitudes toward Pit Bills with you outside where you live. As previously stated, if minding my own business I see someone totally lose it because I’m walking my dog and go for a gun…you should expect that some of us who both own Pit Bulls and conceal carry won’t simply let you destroy a family pet due to an irrational fear. A pet is treated as a member of the family, and will be protected as such.

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11. Someone recently cross-bred a pit bull with a collie.

    After it mauls someone, it runs and fetches help.

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12. Wow. What a tough guy.

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