this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2025
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This study seems to show that of 134 mammalian bites studied, about 73% were from dog bites both before and after the dangerous dogs act. I don't have full access to the article but the abstract seems to imply that dangerous breed attacks represented a small percentage of the total bite treatments.
I'm not sure it can conclude that the rate of attacks overall stayed the same when dangerous breed ownership rates as a whole reduced. The conclusion seems to be that "dog bites are still a similar percentage of mammalian bites" without regard to the overall rate of dog ownership and the impact of the law on dangerous dog ownership rates specifically (but perhaps it is inside the study?)
One would expect that this sort of statistic would be easy to find if it were true, given the advocacy of bully-breed groups.
The study measures the totals before and after the ban. If the totals did not change, then one can reasonably conclude there was little to no effect (as that was the point of the ban; reduce bite attacks). The only way you could still justify the ban worked is if dog ownership increased after the ban, which seems unlikely (and iirc the study touches on that).
I mean ultimately the burden of proof isn't on them. There are some statistics that seem to support them. If thess BSL bans worked, one would expect evidence to show that they did, but that's seemingly completely absent too. The vast majority of independent organisations seem to be against these bans.
If these bans worked, where are the statistics that show they do? What about the myriad of studies saying bite incidents are caused by neglect of the dog rather than breed?
But this study doesn't say anything at all about the dog bite rate does it? It takes 134 mammalian bite victims and reports the percentage that came from dogs. I could be convinced by a study that showed a rate of dog bites of 13/100000 before an effective bully breed restriction and a rate within statistical significance after the restriction was in place.
I can't really find clear (or free) statistics on this either way. However, it seems clear that any reduction in rate of ownership of dangerous breeds should reduce the overall bite rate. Is your hypothesis that by reducing ownership rate of a particular breed (bully breeds, in this case), other dangerous breeds:
Become more popular and continue to bite at the same rate
Do not increase in rate of ownership, yet bite more to keep the overall bite rate the same
?
If you mean #2, this is an extraordinary claim that doesn't stand without evidence. If you mean #1, maybe you have a point, but hard to evaluate without access to the stats. If you mean #1, do you think a restriction on all dangerous breeds would reduce the overall bite rate? (Coincidentally, France's restriction applies to all dangerous breeds)
The point is that there's not really such a thing as a dangerous breed. There's dangerous dog owners though, and that's different. When you ban a breed, most of these owners will switch to a different breed (which inevitably rises in the dog bite statistics). That's mostly what that study showed, despite the ban on dangerous breeds, there weren't any fewer bite incidents.
In theory, sure. But this assumes that certain breeds are inherently more dangerous, which is largely unproven. Most larger studies seem to dispute this.
France's bite rate isn't substantially lower than neighbouring countries that don't have these bans. In practice, it seems these bans do little to nothing to reduce bites, which is an indicator that the breed isn't the issue.
It is an extraordinary claim that so called non dangerous breeds become more dangerous when so called dangerous breeds are restricted. I don't think you can compare bite rates across borders because access to care, statistic collection methodology, dog ownership culture, etc are all confounding factors.
You're making the logical error that the amount of bites indicates that a breed is dangerous. The claim I (and many others) make is that there's no such thing as a dangerous breed.
As an analogy, suppose the government finds that cars with big flame stickers stuck on them get more speeding tickets, or end up in more accidents. Does the sticker make the car go faster? Would you expect the accident rate to go down if the government banned flame stickers? Or would you expect cars with lightning stickers to suddenly cause more trouble?
Ultimately, the owner is responsible and studies have shown that the owner is by far the strongest indicator of whether or not there will be problems.
The studies don't seem to show that. In you analogy, it's not stickers, it's faster cars. Would you expect that if faster cars were banned, those owners would drive slower cars equally as fast as faster cars keeping the rate of speeding tickets?
This is an extraordinary claim that requires definitive evidence. You can't just come to a conclusion that "ultimately the owner is responsible" without evidence.
Well that's the point of contention.
Actually, yes! They might not go over the speed limit as much, but they're likely to break it just as often. Just about every car can go over the legal speed limit, these owners don't care as much about safety to they're about as likely to break the law in a Lambo than in a BMW or a Renault.
I've already given you a study that showed no changes before and after a ban. At this point the claim really isn't so extraordinary, and I expect you to provide some statistic or evidence that a ban does work.
The owner being responsible is an assertion, not a conclusion. I've also already cited studies for you that found that how owners interact with and treat their dog is a very significant predictor when it comes to bite attacks.
I can respect the need to see statistics, but I don't really think that if one side present evidence with statistics that are possibly flawed in some way, the correct solution is to call it unbelievable and side with the other side that hasn't presented any concrete evidence or statistics showing anything definitive.
You have made this assertion without any real evidence. The single study, if you are able to read more than the abstract, doesn't show the overall bite rate, the severity of bites, none of this. If you make an assertion that any reduction in dogs capable of doing harm, "dangerous" in the sense that a powerful car is dangerous, has no impact on the severity and frequency of injuries, this is not an evidence based assertion.
It is understandable to have an opinion about an issue, but it is dishonest to present it as evidence based if there is none.