Except as a child, I've never had a dog and, even then, they were family dogs and not my own. However, I have been around a lot of dogs and like them well enough. Statistically, I don't doubt that pit bulls are involved in more aggressive acts than many other types of dogs, but it doesn't necessarily imply that pit bulls are all that more vicious. Much of this might be because people who want their dog to be mean and vicious are likely to choose a pit bull, as HappyFlowerLady suggests. Raised gently, pit bulls are gentle. Raised to be mean, they are quite capable of being mean. If people who wanted vicious dogs were to choose poodles, we'd probably be banning poodles.