I honestly didn't know there was such a thing as a lazy form of grief. The only grief I have ever known or seen in others was always very intense and, quite honestly, exhausting. Sometimes it even gives way to anger. Sometimes it even ruins entire families. No, grief is not for the lazy.
I know that deep down inside there has to be a miniscule of sympathy if not empathy for the family that lost a five year old to a wincing mauling. It just doesn't show very much here. It really is easy not to feel the pain when it isn't our own. Statistics often mean nothing to us unless we become one of them. My family was affected by a very rare statistic that resulted in a horrible unnecessary death and the subsequent death of another member. I can tell you that knowing it was rare and could have been prevented did not quell the grief one bit. Statistics have a funny way of thumbing their noses at you. Not being one doesn't mean you will never become one. I am using "you" here in the generic and it is not directed at any specific person. It is wrong to be angry at this family. They have done nothing except be a victim of a horrible killing.
I remember Harry Nilsson's work, The Point, where one of the characters says, "We see what we want to see, and we hear what we want to hear, ya dig?". The general public falls into that category right now on this issue, and so do all pit bull owners, it seems. Both sides are seeing what they want to see and hearing what they want to hear. If you feel that others exploit these deaths for the cause against a breed, the truth is, if there weren't another death there would be nothing to exploit.
I really feel for those of you who have beloved pit bulls, but if you would just take a moment and re-read how little of your feelings are associated with victims in these threads, I know you will see what I am saying here. I know you are afraid. But shutting down your feelings for victims or showing disdain for their valid feelings will not help the case for pit bulls. The thing is, I know it's not deliberate so much is it rings of fear of your own. Fear that one day your dog may be banned. I understand this and I honestly don't know the answer. But I will tell you that the answer does not lie in defending growing statistics and discounting deaths as the fault of people who THOUGHT they had a family pet before it killed. I really think you would all do better to say, Yes there is a problem with pit bull attacks and I am saddened because my dog isn't part of that problem.
Honestly, blaming the victims of this killing or their subsequent reactions from grief (as in helping someone to make a video) is not very helpful to The Cause. I know that people's beloved pets hang in the balance here, but it does no good to comparatively discount the pain, suffering, disfigurement or death of someone who is loved by someone else. As I said, the future of beloved pets hang in the balance so it's at least somewhat excusable, but not to the general public. They are never in the mood for intellectualizing when they feel they are in danger. Overall, the general public is going to win out when it comes down to them or any one of our dogs. It's the way it is.
It used to be that people had dogs and if one got loose, you would look out the window and day Geeze, Ernie's dog is loose. You hoped that he didn't poop on your lawn at best or get hit by a car at worst. In the decades in which I grew up, and I'm no Spring Chicken, I did not know a single person personally who was mauled or killed by a dog until the past decade. It did happen "somewhere else" and it was covered in newspapers then too. But it was comparatively rare, rare enough to be horrific to imagine it actually happening to anyone you knew. It's not like that today. Today, if Ernie's dog gets loose and it's a breed we have read about over and over again, we say Oh My God, Ernie's dog is loose and he could attack and kill somebody. You have to realize that this is where the public is at and that it is not altogether without reason. All any of us has to do is google any breed name followed by the word "kills" to understand that the concern is real. The only time I ever got bitten by a dog where it really hurt, it was a pomeranian. If I google "Pomeranian Kills" I don't imagine I will see too many articles. Today, if I see a loose Pom, my first thought isn't that it will kill anyone, but I wouldn't want to be bitten. Bites happen. They don't kill. The public accepts that a dog could bite. Maimings and deaths on the other hand, are not acceptable--especially with respect to children or the elderly. The net has given the public a heavier understanding of these deaths and how they occur and it is really not helpful in either direction to ignore the statistics.
I know I have mentioned this before and I am only trying to throw a dose of honesty in here, but the general public does not want to adapt to dogs. They expect dogs to adapt to them. This means they expect the public to be as safe as possible from the potential that a child or other pet might be killed or maimed by a dog of any breed should he happen to get loose. Dogs get loose sometimes. It happens. It could happen to anyone. Does every breed have the potential? Of course, just like every human has the potential. Some humans have the temperament for it, some don't. Some humans aren't wired right. Some dogs aren't wired right. Some dogs have the temperament for it and some dont. I think all of us have the potential to kill in self defense but not as an offense--that is, unless there is something seriously wrong with us. Soldiers not withstanding. I'm sure we can all agree that if a guy ran down the street and killed several people indiscriminately, we would forget who his parents were or what his upbringing was and just focus on the fact that he is crazy. We would blame him. However, with dogs, it is easy to determine breed or breed mixes. So you see, it's the natural course of things when the public at large reads about these things associated with one breed almost weekly, that they would connect the dots toward the breed, without regard to who owned each and every dog and how it was bred or raised. In the public's mind, these are "peripheral" issues to the "problem" they see with their safety. But regardless of who is peripherally to blame, when a dog kills another pet or a human, it is the dog's fault. Dogs have no constitutional protections and are not entitled to fair trials. When a victim is killed this is the travesty, not the fate of the dog.
Society does not expect us to keep animals that have a history of sudden short fuses and call them family pets. They regard them with the same caution as they would a pet tiger. When a person is maimed or killed by the same breed almost weekly somewhere out there, there is no way on this earth that the public will accept that the "Victim did something to make it happen". This will never be acceptable. Children will never be hurt by dogs with short fuses if we just get rid of children. You can see that is not a very good argument. Ok, then we will train all children. No, we won't, because as I said the public does not want to adapt to dogs. Dogs must adapt to them. If a particular breed of dog is so different as to require special training of the general public, the outrage would be even greater. They will make laws and more laws to ensure their own safety, even if they are not reasonable laws. But please do not blame the victims for this fervor. They are the least guilty of us all in their grief, even if they justifiably lash out in grief induced anger as their numbers grow. Losing a child has got the be the worst thing that could ever happen to a mother and the efforts we see are almost identical the the MAD movement. Victims are gathering their strength and pooling it. It's what keeps them all from losing their minds over their senseless losses.