Dog breed bans are about human prejudice — not the dogs (www.vox.com)

submitted 11 months ago by jeffw@lemmy.world to c/politics@lemmy.world

139 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Highlights: In a bizarre turn of events last month, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced that he would ban American XL bullies, a type of pit bull-shaped dog that had recently been implicated in a number of violent and sometimes deadly attacks.

XL bullies are perceived to be dangerous — but is that really rooted in reality?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] PetDinosaurs@lemmy.world 59 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

If you don't think that dog breed is a good predictor of behavior, you have not spent enough time around dogs.

For thousands of years dogs have been bred for specific purposes. These behaviors are innate. They do not need to be taught. Sure, you can train them to be better, but the behaviors are written all over their genes

My grandparents had shepherds. The dogs had never seen sheep or been taught anything about herding, but they would attempt to herd all my cousins when they were children, then get agitated when the children wouldn't herd. Here's some puppies doing it

Here's some pointers pointing. They have not been taught this (and frankly I can't imagine even training most dog breeds to do that)

Here's a boxer dog boxing. Here's one spinning. They aren't taught this, and they all do it.

There's hounds rolling in stink. There's sight hounds and smell hounds. There's retrievers retrieving, being irresistibly drawn to water, and carrying around things very gently. There's huskies being extremely energetic and vocal.

I could go on.

Do you really think that dogs that have been bred to fight other dogs to the death and bear enormous amounts of pain (game) before giving up are not dangerous? You're mental.

Sure they're sweet to their owners. That's because people who breed animals for blood sports are not the kind of people who would have trouble immediately removing from the gene pool any of their animals that are disloyal.

It's not like it's just pitbulls. Dobermans are implicated too. They're guard dogs but for humans rather than predator animals.

People with agendas can play all kinds of statistical games to show what they want to show. In the scientific world, these kinds of tricks stand out. That's why any non-trivial summary statistic is useless without a large text explaining the methodology.

This is one of those things that is so obvious it boggles my mind that people even question it.

Of course dogs that are bred to murder are dangerous.

load more comments (9 replies)

this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2023

55 points (65.0% liked)

politics

18821 readers

4820 users here now

Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!

Rules:

Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive.
Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

That's all the rules!

Civic Links

• Register To Vote

• Citizenship Resource Center

• Congressional Awards Program

• Federal Government Agencies

• Library of Congress Legislative Resources

• The White House

• U.S. House of Representatives

• U.S. Senate

Partnered Communities:

• News