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Originally Posted by Zulu29
I think you’re getting “scope creep” here. The spirit and intent of these bans are to reduce bites that cause serious injury and death, not all bites. Obviously, zero dog bites would be ideal but it’s not an achievable goal. Now, it would appear with Toronto that they have evidence to correlate the banning of pitbulls to fewer serious bites. That would indicate banning pit bulls is a reasonable proposal in the name of public safety.
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The stats do not track the severity of the bites though, they track times where someone who has been bitten by a dog has sought treatment from a doctor. What Toronto has shown is that banning breeds classed as pit bulls results in fewer bites by those breeds.
If the goal is to reduce the cases of serious injury and death, we need stats that show both those things before we can figure out what the solution is. Right now, we have incomplete data. Maybe emulating the approach that Calgary has taken is a good stop gap until reliable data is available.
If we are going to diminish input on policy making by groups such as humane societies and the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association , then we should have the best data possible to base decisions on. It would seem that most people would want evidence based policies to be enacted, but not having complete evidence defeats that.