If you can stand all the typos, a SC TV station site has a story on 2 Pitbulls whose owner was "out of town" when they got loose yesterday. The dogs bit a kid, killed another dog who was in his own fenced-in yard and then turned on police officers who shot them both to death. Obviously we don't have all the facts here - namely, who was responsible for the dogs during the owner's absence and how did they get loose? But not letting an absence of facts (or spellcheck) deter them on their mission o' stupidity, the station has a poll on whether Pitbulls should be illegal smack-dab in the middle of their homepage. Sensationalism, anyone?
I say again: breed bans do not solve the problem of irresponsible owners. Nor do breed bans address the fact that any dog can bite, although it's important to note that most dogs don't. Is it possible for MSM to engage the community in a reasonable debate on responsible dog ownership and forgo the whole Pitbull-maulings-get-ratings mentality? If not, I guess it's up to us.
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Well, the encouraging news is that most people responding to the poll are against the idea of a breed ban.
What I find remarkable is that I never seem to hear about a dog bite in the news that ISN'T by a pit bull. This suggests to me more than anything else that people just label every mixed breed or other dog that bites a "pit bull," unless it is ridiculously obvious that it is something else, like say, a dachshund. Or a collie. It wouldn't shock me if, in case of any doubt, the media just went ahead with "pit bull."
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