That sort of misidentification is another reason that dog bite statistics are unreliable; they depend not on rigorous breed identification but on amateurs' identification based on physical traits shared by bull dogs, mastiffs and terriers. Artificially group dog bite reports involving a dozen unrelated breeds or mixes together under the misidentification "pit bull" and yeah, you make pit bulls sound scary.

Even when properly applied to pit bull type dogs, the term "pit bull" is imprecise because as wikiipedia states "pit bull is an umbrella term for several types of dog believed to have descended from bull and terriers. In the United States, the term is usually considered to include the American Pit Bull Terrier, American Staffordshire Terrier, American Bully, Staffordshire Bull Terrier, and sometimes the American Bulldog, along with any crossbred dog that shares certain physical characteristics with these."

Anyone who argues that breed is a reliable indicator of violent behavior and refuses to acknowledging the lack of reliability of eye witness breed identification on the basis of appearance is arguing in bad faith.

That illustrates a point though. Pit Bulls tend to get bought by violent owners because of their infamy, which reinforces it and gets more people to recognize them, which yields more taught violence, and so on...