Pit Bulls and Our Ban-Happy Culture

The Worcester Telegram & Gazette has recently run a series of stories about pit bull terriers. A few weeks ago, a 3-year old city boy was mauled by a neighbor’s pit bull, and the T&G saw fit to publish the boy’s picture, after he had received some 100 stitches to his face. The graphic image apparently served its purpose, as the T&G has continued to publish additional articles about the topic with thinly-veiled editorializing sprinkled in supposed “news.”

Pit bulls are among the cyclical topics that papers like the T&G rehash every few months. Some poor kid gets mauled and it’s front page news, just like texting-while-driving, gun control, and abortion seize headlines for a news cycle or two. The T&G’s position on pit bulls is apparent – the paper wants you to appreciate how dangerous the breed is in effort to influence sentiment for a ban. And judging by the comments readers have posted on the T&G website, the majority of readers are buying the T&G’s argument. They’re stepping right into the hot, steaming pile of it with both feet.

I am a Worcester resident but I don’t own a dog or any pets for that matter. I don’t particularly care for dogs in general – I think they’re dirty and smelly and a lot of work. I care even less for pit bull terriers. My opinion is that they’re kept more as cultural symbols than as pets to be adored. They symbolize so-called thug culture and serve to advertise their owners’ testosterone (or lack thereof). Just to be clear, I normally wouldn’t give much thought to pit bulls.

It’s terrible that the little boy was mauled by one. I can’t imagine how his mother felt or how the owner of the dog feels. Tragedy is a word we overuse, I think, and while the lad’s injuries were horrible looking and he’ll likely bear a scar for many years if not for the rest of his life, the incident is more unfortunate than tragic. I’m not going to lay blame, as I’m sure those directly involved have plenty to go around. I feel bad for all involved.

But what the T&G is doing gives me pause. Sure, they’re in the business of selling papers and luring visitors to their website. I get that. And sure, sensationalism sells. Now at least one local politician is stepping into the T&G’s shadow, though, calling for an outright ban on the breed. One has to ask, just what would a ban on pit bulls accomplish? I asked the very question using one of my T&G pseudonyms, “Nanny Banhammer.” The commenters turned their hysteria-fueled vitriol at me. So hear me out, and I welcome your feedback.

A brief review of internet search results for the term “probability dog bites in USA” turned up several results, some scholarly, some decidedly unscholarly. A 1998 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association reproduced on another site (http://www.injurycontrol.com/Hank/reprints/dogbitejbr71203.pdf) sets the rate of occurrence of dog bites that result in injury at roughly 13 per 10,000, or 0.13%. Other articles set the rate of occurrence slightly higher or slightly lower depending on the population and duration of the survey, but the 13/10,000 from the 1998 paper is plausible enough. Children, especially boys between the ages of 5 and 9, are more likely to suffer bite injuries according to the article I referenced (60.7/10,000 or 0.607%). I’m no expert and this is just a blog, so suffice it to say that the probability that anyone is injured after being bitten by any dog anywhere in the US is around 0.15%, and the probability of being bitten specifically by a pit bull is a subset of that population. Even if we assume that pit bulls are responsible for half of all bite-related injuries, the number (0.075%) is quite low.

If reducing the risk of potential injury is the goal of those calling for a ban on pit bulls, it would seem to me that there are far riskier things that we could be spending our resources to mitigate. Take youth sports, for example. I didn’t bother to do any research because I think it’s obvious that kids playing organized football or basketball or dancing or softball are far more likely to be injured while playing sports than they are to be injured from a pit bull bite. I played baseball, football, and was involved with skiing and mountain biking, and I can boast a long list of injuries directly caused by my own participation in those activities. I broke bones, suffered concussions, dislocated joints, and had to be stitched up a dozen or so times. My nose is bent from an errant baseball. All of my fingers are bent from fractures and I have arthritis in my neck and shoulders from playing high school football. I tore the meniscus in my right knee when I crashed my mountain bike. I broke a thumb in a skiing fall.

Yet we as a culture accept the risk of injury that sports present. More than that, we encourage participation and chalk up such injuries and indeed more serious ones to being part of the game. Our culture balances the risk of injury against the rewards of participation and the life lessons we learn through sport. But we fail to see the big picture when it comes to everyday risks we take that could result in injury. Then when we see a scary headline, we sound the alarm without framing the risk in the proper context.

Now at least one local politician is calling for a ban on pit bulls, and given the reaction of readers of the T&G stories, it just may have the legs to become law. It’s a reaction to the hysteria the T&G has created. Ignoring the remote probability that anyone may actually be injured by pit bulls, we instead seize the opportunity, once again, to wield the ban hammer. We claim the moral high ground in order to restrict the behavior of our neighbors. And it’s all fueled by the media. I find that, in particular, scary.