Virginia has had a long running problem with Pit Bulls and their owners. The alleged problems include increased aggression, systemic poor ownership, and a powerful build that causes relatively more damage to their victims when they attack. These issues bring the pit bull breed to light when discussing legislation of dog ownership much to the ire of the Pit Bull owners.

The allegation that the Pit Bull breed has increased aggression compared to other animals is dubious. Pit Bulls are a dog like any other and are no more prone to violence than any other animal. The root of this allegation is do to the popularization of the myth that Pit Bull owners only use the dogs for fighting. While this may be true in many cases that are in the news the likely fact that the thousands of dogs that don’t make the news are owned by responsible loving owners is overlooked. The vast majority of these animals are as tame and loving as any other dog.

Another issue that keeps being thrown around is that Pit Bull owners are inherently bad owners. Concerns that the owners are suffering from inferiority complexes and need what is considered a “power” dog may or may not be true. With out a comprehensive psychological survey by professionals we will never know. It is definitely true that the left wing media that likes to cover these stories many times portrays the owners of the dogs in the unfortunate accidents as bad owners. Maybe its a case of one sided coverage of the issue?

The issue of these powerfully built dogs cannot be denied, they are very strong. This can be said for many other dogs though. There are some very large German Shepard’s, St. Bernard’s are massive, and Boxers are a extremely large dog too. Attacks by these dogs surely is just as devastating to the victims but it doesn’t seem that they receive the same amount of coverage in the news. A attack by any large animal regardless of breed is tragic and the news should spend more time focusing on that.

At the end of the day perhaps what we should all be discussing is not whether or not Pits are good but how big of a dog is too big to safely keep in our cities. It certainly would make more sense, instead of crucifying one breeds loving owners.