This one is for Dylan Boswell, the shortest term facebook friend I’ve had so far.
I find it interesting that someone promoting the Zero Aggression Principle would have need of a weapon designed to kill people. It takes professional grade tolerance for contradiction to not see the hypocrisy in those two positions held together. How can you not be the aggressor while killing someone? You can wave your hands in any flim-flam manner you wish, but no amount of hand waving will change the fact that you are alive and the other person is dead at your hand. That is aggression, plain and simple. It’s excusable in certain circumstances, but you don’t get to kill people (outside of war) just because you want to.
So yes, owning a gun that carries the appearance of one designed to kill people signals the potential of aggression (openly carrying any weapon signals this to some extent) Ask the Somalis, the Afghanis, the Iraqis if they felt threatened when approached by people carrying those weapons.
…and yes, you are stupid for owning a Pit Bull. That breed of dog was carefully bred for aggression against other dogs, a stronger bite and stronger physic. As a dog owner whose dogs have been attacked by free-wandering Pit Bulls, more than once, I have very little sympathy for the cries of how gentle Pit Bulls are. They were made into weapons, to fight in a sport that mercifully no longer exists. I’m not certain that the breed has a reason to continue to exist.
Editor’s note. Don’t repeat common knowledge unless you have verified it first. Words to live by. Pit bulls do not have stronger bites, nor are they physically stronger. They are more aggressive with other dogs and this is especially true if they have had training to be aggressive with other dogs. Which means being trained to fight, what the pit in pit bull means. A pit fighting dog. Pit fighting still exists all over the globe. The extent that any dog is aggressive is quite probably correlated to the history of that dogs lineage. In other words, if your dog is the direct descendant of dogs that were bred to guard and/or fight, you will have a dog that is aggressive with other dogs and sometimes people.
Having a dog that you want to threaten others with is having a liability on the end of the leash you are holding. You should picture dollars flying out of your pocket. You don’t want a dog that bites. What you do want is a dog that follows instruction. A subtle but important difference.
