Asklemmy

One of the things we based rates on was the breeds of dog people owned. Pitbulls and certain other dog breeds do not just have a bad reputation because people irrationally fear/hate them, they actually do pose a greater risk.

This is a classic example of someone observing a statistical correlation between specific factors and using that to assert a direct causal relationship between them. It implies that an insurance agency is able to 1) accurately identify every single breed of dog in every single insurance related incident (which is definitely not the case, because I doubt every insurance company is doing genetic testing on every single dog it comes across) and 2) tie a causal relationship between dog breed and incident. If I were going by typical insurance metrics, and to borrow from your analogy of "teenagers as unsafe drivers," you would also assume that red Camarros, something more expensive to insure than your more conservative sedan, were statistically more dangerous than, say, a white Civic, as if they were what caused their drivers to get into car accidents, as opposed to young, reckless people interested in a fast sports car to simply go out and buy one. These are people who would be reckless behind the wheel of any car, but who are statistically correlated with a particular type of one. But you still mark the red Camaro as more expensive to insure regardless of who buys it because it's statistically correlated with a higher degree of accidents.

Sure but then the problem is moron owners, not the dog or it's breed. Those morons could be just as cruel to a German Shepherd, Boxer, Rottweiler, Presa Canario, Bullmastiff, etc. Nature vs Nurture I guess.

How many owners are morons that wanted cool mean dog though.

This is sort of my point. A pit bull that's socialized, well trained, and cared for is generally very safe to be around. A pit bull that has the opposite kind of life? Well, what kinda dog wouldn't be an asshole under those circumstances?

I'm this way with German Shepherd s . I live dogs, Ive had big dogs, I met plenty of friendly Sheperds, but both my mom and I have been bite by 3 different ones (over our lifetimes). Now I am on edge around them.

The other user who responded to you, @[email protected], does a good job of analyzing the core idea here. To quote Benjamin Disraeli, there's lies, damn lies, and statistics. Black people are no more "innately inclined towards criminality" than a pit-bull is innately inclined towards mauling people. Where people of color have been historically over policed, profiled by the criminal justice system, and generally set up to have a higher rate of criminal statistics than other ethnic groups, pit-bulls face similar statistical problems. Bite statistics are often self-reported by people who either witnessed a dog attack or who were themselves victims of one. Identifying a dog's breed by sight, especially for mixed breed dogs, is nearly impossible, and more error prone than accurate. And for a pound, any "big dog with a blocky head" immediately gets labeled as a pit-bull, even if it has literally no pit-bull DNA. These dogs are routinely adopted by people who explicitly train a dog to be mean to people, as opposed to socializing them. The fact that they also have this reputation as guard dogs or attack dogs exacerbates their reputation.

I think the reason they are making that comparison is that there are a lot of other factors that feed into the final numbers. Crime stats aren't a final determination of the inherent criminality of different groups of people. Things like poverty, arrest rates, and conviction rates all skew the numbers.

With pit bulls, people often get them because they want a dog that's "tough" and they essentially train (or don't train) them to be bad dogs. The dog itself isn't at fault.

Anyone who's been around a lot of dogs will tell you that small dogs are more bitey. The fact that a pit bull is stronger and can do more damage is also not the dogs fault.

*little chihuahua