The home secretary is seeking "urgent advice" about banning American XL Bully dogs as footage shows one of the animals attacking an 11-year-old girl and a man in Birmingham. Suella Braverman has said the animals are a "clear and lethal" danger after the video of the attack in Bordesley Green emerged on the social media platform TikTok. West Midlands Police are investigating after two men, who were bitten and left with injuries to their shoulders and arms, were taken to hospital to be treated for their injuries after the incident on Saturday.
Pitbull isn’t a breed, it’s a colloquialism that is used as a catch-all for any breed with a certain look. They’re either American bullys, American pit bull terriers, American Staffordshire terriers, Staffordshire bull terriers, American bulldogs, or a mix of these breeds. If you aren’t collecting separate data for each of these breeds individually, then the best we can do is divide the total number of bites between those breeds by 5.
Dog breeds are defined separately for a reason, you can’t just lump them together, ban 5(6 if you include mixes) breeds of dog, then think the dog bite issue is solved. Assholes who buy dogs only to isolate and ignore and/or mistreat them, will just choose the next most aggressive breed, then treat them the same. Statistically, that will mean that German shepherds will be the next banned breed, as they routinely come up as the second most deadly specific breed of dog. Say goodbye to your GS.
This is the same problem behind attempts to “solve” firearm violence through arbitrary bans and has strong parallels in ongoing knee-jerk reactions and other clout-chasing behavior in response to any events.
At the end of the day, we aren’t going to see any improvement in either until we assess the assholes part of the equation.
Lmao, it’s hilarious to see people post stuff like this in all seriousness.
Like, firearm bans do objectively work at reducing gun violence, and banning pitbulls would reduce the average severity and rate of dog bites.
They’re not root cause solutions but if your root cause solution is to just not have any more irresponsible assholes in the world then you might want to rethink your problem space.
I think his point is that keeping guns broadly but e.g. banning “assault” weapons doesn’t keep people safe.
In NYS, for example, you can have a semi auto rifle easily enough, but it can’t have a telescoping stock, pistol grip, etc.
Compare that to the much broader restrictions in Australian or British gun laws, and it’s no surprise why you still have many, many more mass shootings in NY.
I would argue that the primary driver of that ineffectiveness is not the fact that they’re trying to ban specific types of guns, but that all of those things are completely legal in neighbouring or nearby jurisdictions with no border controls between them. It wouldn’t solve the whole gun violence problem but if America as a whole banned them I think you would see much more of an effect than just a singular state.
Look at last year’s mass shooting in Buffalo, where a racist drove halfway across the state to shoot up a grocery store in a black neighborhood. He shot 12 people, including a “good guy with a gun” that the NRA claims stops attacks like that.
He had bought his rifle legally in NYS, but went across the border to PA to buy 30 round magazines, which are illegal in NY.
Having access to 20 more rounds per mag than NY’s max certainly didn’t help things, but that terrorist attack would probably still have happened if NYs laws were nation wide.
The problem is both that location-specific gun control is ineffective because you can just go a state/city over, and that passing effective gun control even in a state like NY is almost impossible.
It really is.
You recognize the measures do nothing to address the actual root issues while sliding by the callouts of lack of data/fact behind your assertion even aside from the poor reasoning itself, all while trying to mount your own high horse.
It’s peak clown behavior.
I recognize that you’re the only country that regularly has mass shootings. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that you can address a problem without addressing the root cause when the root cause is infeasible to address (like people occasionally becoming unhinged).
Breeding dogs is already a largely narcissistic practice, we don’t need to allow the breeding of the most violent and dangerous ones.
Right. The UK has mass stabbings instead of mass shootings. I’d rather have a mass stabbing epidemic than what we’ve got.
Interestingly enough, when one addresses the root issues - the motivations and pressures behind the violence - you end up with neither mass shootings nor mass stabbings… which is the point.
I’d rather not only care that violence is done by X implement - I’d rather we do something about the violence, categorically. Incidentally, this would have the side benefit of, say, improving lives.
Except that the root cause of gun violence is that the human brain is inherently fallible and didn’t evolve to own point and click murder devices.
You give everyone a powerful killing tool and surprise surprise you get more mass killings.
The UK has issues with knife crime, but it’s absurd to suggest that they’re remotely comparable to America’s issues with gun crime or that the UK wouldn’t be worse off if every kid with a knife was strapped dup instead.
“Gun violence is because human brain no get clicky killy” might be one of the most absurd assertions I’ve seen. I’m looking forward to whatever semblance of support you can scrounge up for that assertion.
By your reasoning, the rate of mass shootings should have correlated strongly with the saturation of firearms. Why hasn’t it?
“People increasingly experience desperate extremes and surprise surprise you get more desperate actions” is both a more reasonable, rational fit and actually tied to reality.
It’s similarly absurd to pretend that the only relevant difference between the United States and pick a country is the presence of firearms.
by the logic then rocket launcher and high explosives would be legal.
They are legal.
Not really, no. You can take action to address symptoms… but those don’t do anything about the problem. For example, you can take myriad pain relievers to feel less shitty about a cold - addressing the symptoms - but the problem is still there, unaddressed.
Firearm violence is no different. Pitbulls are no different.
First, let’s highlight the obvious issue - Human breeding is largely a narcissistic practice, we don’t need to allow the breeding of the least intelligent ones.
Second, your irrational fear of a thing does not justify restrictions on that thing.
Yes, when the root problem is unaddressable, like in the case of a cold virus or say, HIV, we instead treat the symptoms as the next best option… so when the root problem of gun violence is 'people having moments of unhingedness" or the root cause of doog attacks is “people being bad dog owners” things that are just statistical realities of the human race that you’ll never be able to eliminate, then you treat the symptoms to make them less severe.
Again, this is why America is the only western country in the world where the number one cause of death for children is gun violence.
Yes we do, read any of the past century of the history of eugenics and youll see the horrible outcomes that result when you try to prevent it.
Again, you’re the only country where people are regularly mass murdered. It is absolutely insane how fucking deluded you are. You can see literally orders of magnitude more western people looking at your children getting slaughtered for no reason but go ‘nope, Merica always the best, never wrong about anything, no mistakes in our history of decision making’. Like Jesus fucking Christ, gain an ounce or thimble or whatever dumbass unit you use full of perspective and self doubt.
And here’s where the statement falls apart - you’ve provided nothing showing the root causes of firearm violence to be unaddressable. Heck, specific to mass shootings, the problems - including “unhingedness” - are very well-understood and very addressable. Specific to aggressive dogs, the common theme raised in these discussions - especially in criticism of this breed-behavior nonsense - is that the person behind the dog is the problem. I’m interested in hearing how you see that as unaddressable.
Would that be the NEJM study which directly recognizes the reasons for such an anomaly are unclear in the same breath it recognizes the overlap with the time of crisis and desperation (hmm, where have we seen that before…) that was the COVID-19 pandemic as if to highlight an explanation, ignores that there were other significantly more severe increases in causes of child deaths (e.g. drug overdose and poisoning), intentionally combines suicide and homicide as if they’re the same, and generally disregards everything in favor of a single distilled talking point? One that specifically avoids asking why and exploring the anomaly?
Worry not, Pew Research explored the anomaly somewhat - of note:
I wonder if there are, say, any long-standing inequality issues regarding opportunity & desperation between some of these demographics, issues which may be thematically similar with observations raised of mass shootings… Nah, it’s gotta be what the headline said.
I see the irony here flew right by you. You’re entirely okay eradicating an entire breed of a living thing because you’re angry with it / scared of it / just don’t like it, but balk at humanity having done the same before to its own? Interesting.
Had you actually addressed a point anywhere in this conversation, I’d have given that some consideration.
Quite the opposite - we, instead, seek to solve underlying issues rather than only caring how the violence occurred. You could learn a thing or two from seeking to improve lives. Also, never wrong about anything? Lmao.
Eliminating a breed of domestic animal that we created for own purposes by not killing them but just not actively breeding them anymore, is not the same thing as eugenics.
Read some fucking history before making dumbass comments like that.
Lol, you just through out of a bunch of bullshit to muddy the water
Bruh, you have metal detectors in every single fucking school and useless cops with guns harassing children in the hallway, shut the fuck up about addressing the “root problems”. You’re treating the symptoms the same as every country, you just have your hands cuffed by your dumbass 200 year old constitution that prevents you from treating the effective system that every other country treats.
Go ahead and tell me, how many mass casualty incidents were there at UK schools last year? Now how many at American schools?
You literally live in the ONLY country on earth where there are regular school shootings, but noooooooo, the difference there couldn’t possibly be that you’re also the only nation on earth with unrestricted firearms being purchasable by anyone. Totally unrelated things!
You’re honestly being so fucking stupid it hurts. Enjoy your next Trump presidency and further slide into shit. Dumbassery like “guns are good! They help people” when your children literally have gun violence as their number one cause of death is flat out embarrassing.
Man you nailed it, in today’s world. But there definitely was an American pitbull breed and there still is but all these designer and backyard breeders fucked it all up. It’s been a while since I’ve looked into this but either the AKC or UKC would list them officially.