Death by Pit Bull: Bred to Kill, by Richard W. Morris, J.D., Ph.D. - Animals 24-7 (2024)

$9.95 paperback, $2.99 Kindle

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Reviewed by Merritt Clifton

“My history with pit bulls goes back to 1990,” retired San Diego and Tucson prosecutor Richard W. Morris opens in Death by Pit Bull.

“That year, while my wife and I were out of town, a young lady was taking our dogs for a walk on a public street.”

Breaking through a fence, a pit bull attacked the Morris family dogs until a neighbor shot the pit bull to protect nearby children.

“I was her lawyer”

“Not long after that attack,” Morris continues, “a pit bull attacked a 17-year-old girl. She did not even know a dog was in the house she was visiting for a party.

“The pit literally bit off her nose, then went for her throat. The owners were able to save her.

“I know this because I was her lawyer.”

Post-retirement, Morris explains, “My wife and I moved to Phoenix, Arizona, and I lost touch with the pit bull issue—until October 7, 2022.”

Hollace Dean, Lilly Jane, & Kirstie Jane Bennard

On that day Morris learned of the October 5, 2022 pit bull attack in Millington, Tennessee, just east of Memphis, that killed five-month-old Hollace Dean Bennard and two-year-old Lilly Jane Bennard, leaving their mother, Kirstie Jane Bennard, 30, in critical condition.

“They owned the dogs for eight years,” summarizes Morris, “and the pit bulls knew the children since they were born. They were a happy family of six: two parents, two children—and two pit bulls,” until suddenly they were an unhappy family of two, after husband Hollace Colby Bennard, 30, authorized Memphis Animal Services to euthanize both pit bulls the next day.

Two weeks later Morris noticed an Arizona Humane Society pit bull promotion that denounced what it called an “unfounded fear of pit bulls” and offered pit bulls for adoption as “goofy, lovable, and loyal pets.”

Tori Whitehurst

The Arizona Humane Society had institutional history to the contrary, having rehomed the pit bull who on November 5, 2007––after passing extensive behavioral screening––killed four-year-old Tori Whitehurst.

Tori Whitehurst was the first of more than 60 people to have been killed by pit bulls rehomed from animal shelters and rescues since the April 2007 arrest of former football player Michael Vick made rehoming pit bulls a humane industry obsession.

Morris confronted the Arizona Humane Society about what he believed to be grossly misleading advertising. His concerns were condescendingly dismissed.

Disturbing realities

This sent Morris on a literature search, in which he encountered two disturbing realities.

One of those realities was, and is, that hard data has for more than a century confirmed that pit bulls are vastly more dangerous to humans, other pets, and other domesticated animals than any other type of dog, in any hands, under any circ*mstances.

The other reality is that the humane industry is in aggressive denial of the data, encouraged and often funded by pit bull owners, breeders, and pit bull advocacy organizations.

This deadly combination of insouciance and cynicism has produced approximately five times more fatal and disfiguring dog attacks in the first 22 years of the 21st century, more than two thirds of them by pit bulls, than in the whole of the 20th century.

“The old M&M meme”

Morris, author of many other books and articles on a variety of topics, including aviation, art, and the law, at last felt obligated to stand up and speak out.

Pit bulls, Morris assesses, are “like the old M&M meme. You have a bowl of M&Ms. They all look good. But some are poison, and those look the same as all the other M&Ms. Yet, if you eat just one, you die. You cannot predict which piece of candy is going to kill you. Will you eat them? Or offer them to children, friends, and neighbors? Unfortunately, pit bulls are the same. You cannot predict what they will do.”

Refutes popular tropes

The first quarter of Morris’ book Death by Pit Bull: Bred to Kill, entitled “Popular Myths,” is a series of nine refutations of tropes including “It’s the Owner, Not the Breed”; “Impossible to Identify a Pit Bull”; “Human-Aggressive Pits ‘Culled’: “Statistics About Pit Bulls Are False”; “The Media is Against Pit Bulls”; “Pit Bulls are Not Unpredictable”; “Pit Bull’s Locking Jaw”; “Pits were the Most Popular Dog”; “Punish the Deed Not the Breed”; and a summation of “Why These Myths Persist.”

Several earlier writers have published similar refutations, notably bloggers Dawn James of Craven Desires and Thomas Mair of SRUV (Sudden, Random, Unprovoked, Violent), but they long since retired from blogging and their once widely read postings, detailed and scholarly in tone, are unfortunately no longer easily found online.

Morris, in prosecutorial style, simply identifies the logical fallacies and structural failings of the pit bull advocacy arguments, and destroys them as if presenting a case to a jury of randomly selected people who might have just become aware of the issues.

First-hand accounts

The second quarter of Death by Pit Bull: Bred to Kill consists of first-hand accounts from 15 pit bull attack victims and survivors.

Though the stories are presented anonymously, Beth & I at ANIMALS 24-7 are familiar with each and every one of them, and in several cases are personally acquainted with the authors.

We have been logging the data on fatal and disfiguring dog attacks, and often publishing the accounts of pit bull attack victims and survivors, for more than 40 years.

“Individual stories are powerful”

Even given our familiarity with the cases, and hundreds of others that are substantially similar, these accounts can be disturbing to read, not only because of the intensity of emotion that the victims and survivors express, but also because none of them have obtained anything remotely resembling justice from animal control agencies and the courts.

Says Morris, “Individual stories are powerful. As Joseph Stalin, I think it was, said: ‘The death of one man is a tragedy.The death of a million is a statistic.’ He was right. You can’t grab somebody’s attention unless you can make the piece dramatic, short, and personal.”

“Other Stuff”

From the personal accounts, Morris proceeds to what he calls “Other Stuff,” including “Mental State of Pit Bull Owners,” “Do Dog Shelters Lie,” and guest contributions by Jeff Borchardt, whose son Daxton was killed by two pit bulls in March 2013, on “Pit Bull Lobby Funding Exposed” and “Tactics of Pit Bull Lobby,” to which Morris adds his own observations.

Much of the latter part of Death by Pit Bull: Bred to Kill reviews legal issues, including a checklist of things to do if attacked, or if a family member is attacked; defense strategies one might encounter in suing or prosecuting a pit bull owner; and a model ordinance to keep it bulls out of a community.

Self-defense against a pit bull

A chapter on Self Defense Against A Pit Bull unfortunately omits mention of fire extinguishers, which ANIMALS 24-7 dog attack research show to be the most consistently effective, safe way to stop a dog attack.

(See )

Of course a fire extinguisher is too big to take out jogging, but every prudent person should keep a fire extinguisher handy at all times in home, car, and garage.

Misunderstood Nanny Dogs?

Comparison of Death by Pit Bull: Bred to Kill to New Orleans attorney Jesse Beasley’s 2015 volume Misunderstood Nanny Dogs? is inevitable.

Much as Morris was motivated to write his book by the October 5, 2022 attack on the Bennard family by their own pit bulls, Beasley was motivated by the March 2013 pit bull attack on Linda Henry, of Westwego, Louisiana, that cost her an eye, an ear, and both arms.

Henry was mauled in her home by three of her own four pit bulls, whom she had raised from puppyhood and treated as family.

As appalling as the attack itself was, Beasley was even more disturbed by the “blame the victim” attitude he saw afterward from pit bull enthusiasts, who mobilized in opposition to the Westwego mayor’s suggestion that the city should ban or regulate possession of pit bulls.

Disturbing patterns

A lifelong social justice advocate, Beasley recognized disturbing patterns in pit bull advocacy that he had encountered in other causes.

Among them was misappropriation of the posture of victimhood by people who are in truth the offenders, whose dogs oppress, terrorize, and often kill or maim others.

There is some structural overlap in Death by Pit Bull: Bred to Kill and Misunderstood Nanny Dogs? Both will be on the ANIMALS 24-7 recommended reading list. Misunderstood Nanny Dogs? is already at the top of Morris’ recommended reading list on page 177 of in Death by Pit Bull: Bred to Kill.

“Beasley was too nice”

But, 300-odd more human deaths by pit bull in the U.S. alone since Beasley wrote, only eight years ago, Morris told ANIMALS 24-7 that, “My take was that Beasley was too nice, and did not ‘bite and shake’ the subject. That is what I want to do with Death by Pit Bull: Bred to Kill.

“My target is not the pit bull fanciers, but the innocent others,” Morris said. “Pit bulllovers seem to have a deep-seated belief that the dog is just fine. I doubt even a precious few will change their beliefs—just like religious beliefs. These folks want to believe what they believe, and nothing will change them. I see trying to change them as a waste of time.

“No problem. I want to grab the attention of the innocent and powerfully explain why pits are the pits.”

Naming names

ANIMALS 24-7 concluded in reviewing Misunderstood Nanny Dogs? that it should be on the reading list for every town council member, state legislator, and editorialist addressing breed-specific legislation.

It should be required reading for animal shelter staff as well, especially the 40% whom one study found would lie about a pit bull in order to rehome the pit––at cost to public trust in the entire animal sheltering industry.

The same is true of Death by Pit Bull: Bred to Kill, which goes much farther in naming names, partly of course because there are now many more names to name.

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