Pit bulls can make excellent pets, and having to choose between keeping what is often seen as a member of the family or moving to a location that doesn’t have a breed-specific ban can be an agonizing experience.

We are sympathetic to the responsible dog owners whose pit bulls have been banned from many of the municipalities in the Denver metro area, including Denver, Aurora, Lone Tree, Louisville and Commerce City.

But as Castle Rock plans to revisit its ban in the coming weeks, we must revisit why these breed-specific bans are still justifiable rules in urban areas.

We have long supported the right of local communities to enact breed-specific bans and in 2014 applauded voters in Aurora for upholding its pit bull ban in a citywide vote. Elected officials across the metro area will rightly be examining these bans to make sure they still make sense, and while we applaud that step, we doubt there will be reason to overturn the long-held rules.

As with all dogs, much depends on the individual animal, because a dog’s temperament is heavily influenced by the environment it was raised in.

The problem with pit bulls — the generic term that most often refers to the three dog breeds of American pit bull terrier, American Staffordshire terrier or Staffordshire bull terrier — is that when they are aggressive and do attack, the strength of the dog’s bite and its propensity to continue to attack after the fight has begun result in more traumatic outcomes, particularly for children.

Researchers last year examined data from 101 unique dog bites to the head and neck in 2012 and 2013, as documented by the University of California Davis Health System. They found that “dog bites from pit bull terriers, compared to bites from all other dogs, are more common, more severe, and not related to the dog being provoked.”

A larger study in 2016 of dog bite injuries found “pit bull bites were implicated in half of all surgeries performed and over 2.5 times as likely to bite in multiple anatomic locations as compared to other breeds.”

It’s not that pit bulls can’t be gentle and loving dogs. The issue is that if a pit bull turns out to be temperamental, the outcome is so often worse for the victim.

Even one of the most oft-cited studies in opposition to breed-specific bans — one conducted by the Centers for Disease Control in 1997 — notes that between 1979 and 1996, pit bulls accounted for 60 of the 164 deaths related to a dog attack where the breed was known. The next closest breeds were Rottweilers (29) and German Shepherds (19).

Overall, dog bites are rare and only a handful of people every year die as a result of animal attacks, so we don’t mean to make too much of this public safety concern. But the fact remains that in urban settings it’s more difficult to keep dogs away from children who may wander into a backyard or stray too close to a dog on leash.

We hope Castle Rock’s Town Council will keep these concerns in mind as it considers whether to replace its pit bull ban with a code that focus on dog behavior instead of breed. Because identifying aggressive dogs before their first bite or attack isn’t easy, and for pit bulls that first incident is often too late.

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