this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2025
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The point is that there's not really such a thing as a dangerous breed. There's dangerous dog owners though, and that's different. When you ban a breed, most of these owners will switch to a different breed (which inevitably rises in the dog bite statistics). That's mostly what that study showed, despite the ban on dangerous breeds, there weren't any fewer bite incidents.
In theory, sure. But this assumes that certain breeds are inherently more dangerous, which is largely unproven. Most larger studies seem to dispute this.
France's bite rate isn't substantially lower than neighbouring countries that don't have these bans. In practice, it seems these bans do little to nothing to reduce bites, which is an indicator that the breed isn't the issue.
It is an extraordinary claim that so called non dangerous breeds become more dangerous when so called dangerous breeds are restricted. I don't think you can compare bite rates across borders because access to care, statistic collection methodology, dog ownership culture, etc are all confounding factors.
You're making the logical error that the amount of bites indicates that a breed is dangerous. The claim I (and many others) make is that there's no such thing as a dangerous breed.
As an analogy, suppose the government finds that cars with big flame stickers stuck on them get more speeding tickets, or end up in more accidents. Does the sticker make the car go faster? Would you expect the accident rate to go down if the government banned flame stickers? Or would you expect cars with lightning stickers to suddenly cause more trouble?
Ultimately, the owner is responsible and studies have shown that the owner is by far the strongest indicator of whether or not there will be problems.
The studies don't seem to show that. In you analogy, it's not stickers, it's faster cars. Would you expect that if faster cars were banned, those owners would drive slower cars equally as fast as faster cars keeping the rate of speeding tickets?
This is an extraordinary claim that requires definitive evidence. You can't just come to a conclusion that "ultimately the owner is responsible" without evidence.
Well that's the point of contention.
Actually, yes! They might not go over the speed limit as much, but they're likely to break it just as often. Just about every car can go over the legal speed limit, these owners don't care as much about safety to they're about as likely to break the law in a Lambo than in a BMW or a Renault.
I've already given you a study that showed no changes before and after a ban. At this point the claim really isn't so extraordinary, and I expect you to provide some statistic or evidence that a ban does work.
The owner being responsible is an assertion, not a conclusion. I've also already cited studies for you that found that how owners interact with and treat their dog is a very significant predictor when it comes to bite attacks.
I can respect the need to see statistics, but I don't really think that if one side present evidence with statistics that are possibly flawed in some way, the correct solution is to call it unbelievable and side with the other side that hasn't presented any concrete evidence or statistics showing anything definitive.
You have made this assertion without any real evidence. The single study, if you are able to read more than the abstract, doesn't show the overall bite rate, the severity of bites, none of this. If you make an assertion that any reduction in dogs capable of doing harm, "dangerous" in the sense that a powerful car is dangerous, has no impact on the severity and frequency of injuries, this is not an evidence based assertion.
It is understandable to have an opinion about an issue, but it is dishonest to present it as evidence based if there is none.