I don't have a dog but my friends have a staffy that is perfectly trained and well behaved, they have a couple of little girls and they follow the dog and pick it up and play with it constantly and there have never been any issues, I've never had an issue with letting my kids play with the dog either. Like you say I think the main issue is the person at the other end of the lead, I see tons of them from my office walking up the high street everyday in their chavved up groups deliberately antagonising one another dogs, the majority of them have made no attempt to train the dog and their are purely a status symbol for some. Unfortunately the media scaremongers everyone to death and in one foul swoop tarnishes all these dogs with the same brush.
If a dog has a good owner that has taken the time to train it and teach it right from wrong, as well as caring for the animal and spending plenty of time with it then they are fine, if knobheads that make no effort to train them and treat them like dirt are allowed to own them then there will always be a problem. Unfortunately there are so many private breeders that trying to bring in or enforce any sort of law that means you have to show you are fully capable of looking after that dog before you can own it is unlikely to happen.
