Good fencing is a sign of responsible owners. Really, with any dog a good fence is a must. The APBT, like a lot of other terrier breeds and scent hounds, likes to get up for a good adventure and will wander if they can. Blood hounds will follow a scent for miles if they can manage to get out. The APBT is a very friendly breed. Dog aggression can be a problem with them, but it needs to be understood that aggressive behavior towads
other dogs is an entirely different matter than aggression towards humans. The history of the APBT as a fighting dog is a very small part of the picture, but one aspect that the ignorant fear mongers don't like to discuss is the avoidence of so called redirected attacks. Bascially, while dog fighting has always been cruel and low class, the dog fighting put on today has little, to nothing, in common with dog fighting 140 years ago. Not unlike the difference between a boxing match and a street fight. Today's dog fighting is a street brawl where idiots try to get two dogs to kill eachother. In the past there were rules that governed a fight, rather like boxing. Fighting dogs had to be absolutely passive towards humans, so that if separation or redirction was required the handler would not be biten while grabing the dog in the middle of a fight. As such you have a dog that, because in part of its fighting history, is less aggressive towards human than many other dogs. It's simply a matter of the media, of the several thousand dog bites a year the media simply choses to report on the small minority committed by so called "pit bulls" and doesn't do it with other breeds. In the 1980's everyone wanted to ban German Shepherds and Dobbies, there still are quite a few localities around the US were those breeds (along with Rotties) are technically banned. The AKC's magazine actually ran a feature on a smaller town in Californa where the two German Shepherds that make up the city's K9 force and technically illegal.
I suppose one of the stupidest aspects of BSL is its own unenforcable nature. Attempts at massive propery removal are always going to be faily dismal failures. As difficult and dangerous as it would be to try and remove all the legally owned guns in America it would be significantly more so with the beloved family pet. My cousin is a Denver city cop, when they were consider this sort of nonsense his position was pretty simple, his job is dangerous enough without making law abiding citizens into mortal enemies. Beyond the dogs and what they mean to their owners, are we really going to risk cops' lives so ignorant fear mongers can have a false sense of security?
As long as irresponsible people have dogs bad things are going to happen, as long as irresponsible people have guns, swimming pools, or access to dangerous power tools bad things are going to happen. There's really nothing that's going to change any of that. I suppose it's just sad we live in a world in which there are people actually stupid enough to believe you can fix this with legislation.
