When will XL Bully defenders admit that genes matter?

It’s not a good time to be an American XL Bully. The breed, an extra-large pitbull variant, has been blamed for a threefold rise in fatal dog attacks in the UK; after a series of high-profile maulings, bullies have today been added to the list of breeds restricted under the Dangerous Dogs Act.

Incidents involving the dogs have been met with a bizarre insistence from some quarters that no, there is nothing especially dangerous about the XL bully. The RSPCA has long opposed ‘breed-specific legislation’, and denies that any breed of dog – including those bred for fighting, or, in the case of one prohibited breed, hunting down escaped slaves – poses more of a risk than another. The Dogs Trust put forward a representative on BBC Breakfast last month to remind us that ‘all dogs can bite’. (This may be so, of course, but not all dogs weigh up to 75 kilograms and are capable of killing fully grown adults unprovoked). Even Boris Johnson weighed in, saying that ‘it’s not the dog that’s the problem, it’s the owner’.