Reply #16: I used to have a Boxer

[LeftyMom]

she was the sweetest and laziest old dog, and very gentle with children. It would never have occured to her to bite anyone, or to fight with another dog, or any problem of that sort. Her one bad behavior was a tendency to pull on the leash when we walked her.

A lot of people were terrified of her because they thought she was a pit bull. Boxers do look a lot like pits, especially the more barrel chested ones (the trend in competition boxers is for them to be very lean bodied, and they look much less like pits this way, but I don't care for that look.)

The problem isn't pit bulls (or rotties or dobies or wolf hybrids or whatever the "evil" dog of the week is,) it's bad owners and bad breeders. Some individual dogs (because of bad breeding or bad upbringing) shouldn't be around kids or strangers, but the majority of dogs of any breed can be trained to be gentle.

edit: if you have cable try to catch Miami animal police on animal planet. They have a blanket pit bull ban there and have for years, and they're still constantly picking them up.