Breed Ban IQ Test

1. If you were the sheriff in your town and you learned that Toyotas were disproportionately involved in more accidents than any other model, would you:
(a) Ban all Toyotas and confiscate the Toyota of anyone caught driving one
(b) Arrest the reckless drivers responsible for those accidents?

2. Which course of action in Question 1 do you think would:
(a) inconvenience the fewest number of people?
(b) be the more efficient use of taxpayer dollars?
(c) be more effective in preventing future accidents involving Toyotas?

3. If your answer to Question 1 was (a) -- ban Toyotas -- and the sheriff's department learned that, by a statistical quirk, drivers of confiscated Toyotas were now perpetrating further accidents by driving, say, Hondas, would you then ban Hondas? If not, why not?

4. If your answer to Question 3 was, "Ban Hondas too, dammit, something HAS to be done," then would you propose a ban on ALL car models with names ending in "a," such as Kias and Mazdas, reasoning that all these brands are pretty much bred for the same purpose? If not, why not? If so, how would you deal with car brands that end in the SOUND of "a," such as Chevrolet?

5. Are you beginning to understand that:

(a) because most of the tens of millions of pet dogs are NOT registered, "breed" cannot be defined in a meaningful way?
(b) that "miscreants" employ Pit Bulls, German shepherds, Rottweilers, Dobermans, Akitas, Great Danes -- that is, whichever dog is handy -- as personal tools of terrorism?
(c) that law enforcement authorities could waste inordinate amounts of time (and, therefore, taxpayer dollars) policing a breed ban, adding to their jobs a task perhaps even more meaningless than enforcing jaywalking laws?
(d) that the people most likely affected by a breed ban -- that is, those inconvenienced, harassed and likely to suffer damage -- are the 99.9% majority of utterly innocent dogs and people?
(e) most important, that breed bans do ESSENTIALLY NOTHING to address the real problem: Human scumbags who abuse animals?

Key: If your answer to any part of Question 5 is "no," I'm afraid you have flunked. Please go back and reconsider your responses.
Hint: The answer to the question, "What shall we do about the bank robber who got away on a bicycle?" is not: Ban bicycles.

The statistics on dog bite related fatalities vary considerably between studies. Nevertheless, there are numerous problems with most dog bite statistics. First and foremost, the vast majority of these statistics provide raw numbers, and are not normalized to reflect the prevalence of any given breed in the overall population of dogs. Without this information, it is impossible to determine the comparative risk of one breed over another from dog bite

Dog bite reports unchanged although fatal attacks by animals always seem to grab headlines. Authorities say the numbers of such incidents are not rising, according to a new study soon to be published in the The Journal of American Veterinary Medical Association in conjunction with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The new study of dog bites through 1997 shows that while overall numbers have remained nearly constant, the number of pit bull attacks have declined but the amount of Rottweiler attacks have climbed.

Although some believe Pit bull mixes and Rottweillers are most likely to kill and seriously maim, fatal attacks since 1975 have been attributed to dogs from at least 30 breeds.