Quote:
Originally Posted by PepsiFree
Except Pitbulls are less dangerous than both of those things, by an extreme margin.
If someone can own a gun, any gun at all, there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be able to own a dog.
But we can certainly do more to regulate the requirements of those owners.
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Would you prefer to leave a 6-year-old alone in a room with a loaded gun or with a pitbull? The child can be trained not to touch the gun. The pitbull can be trained not to attack. But these are both living things, and you can never be absolutely sure how they'll respond to circumstances. I'd feel pretty uneasy in both cases. Both can be instantly lethal. Both are out of the control of a responsible adult.
The raw numbers support that guns are more dangerous ("by an extreme margin" -- 600 accidental deaths vs. 20/year in USA). But normalized statistics may undermine that. Stats posted earlier indicate on the order of 20 pitbull-related fatalities per year, but that's with a breed population of about 18 million. That's over 1 per million per year. Meanwhile, the 600-odd accidental firearms deaths and a gun population of well over 300 million, giving under 2 per million per year.
Societally, guns are more dangerous
in the extreme. PRIMARILY because they vastly outnumber pitbulls, and because they're used to commit harm intentionally. But on equal footing -- being out of responsible control -- a gun and a pitbull may not be all that different after all.