If you’re a Maryland resident and a pit bill owner, your responsibilities as a dog owner may just have gotten a lot more serious.

A Maryland court ruled late last week that pit bulls are “inherently dangerous” and that an owner and even their landlord could be held liable for any attacks for the mere fact that the dogs are pit bulls. So reads the key paragraph in the court’s decision, which stemmed from a pit bull known as Clifford that attacked two young boys in one day:

With the standard we establish today (which is to be applied in this case on remand), when an owner or a landlord is proven to have knowledge of the presence of a pit bull or cross-bred pit bull (as both the owner and landlord did in this case) or should have had such knowledge, a prima facie case is established. It is not necessary that the landlord (or the pit bull’s owner) have actual knowledge that the specific pit bull involved is dangerous. Because of its aggressive and vicious nature and its capability to inflict serious and sometimes fatal injuries, pit bulls and cross-bred pit bulls are inherently dangerous.

According to a Centers for Disease Control report cited by the court, pit bulls were responsible for 66 of the 238 dog bite-related fatalities across the country between 1979 and 1996; DogsBite.org reports that pit bulls were responsible for 71 percent of the 31 fatal dog attacks that took place in 2011.

Of course, plenty of pit bull owners and lovers have responded that it’s not a matter of nature as much of nurture when it comes to the dogs. WTOP’s David Burd, who owns a dog kennel in Maryland, wrote an impassioned editorial this afternoon defending the oft-maligned dogs:

Pit bulls get a bad rap, and it’s not just me saying this. I went to Frederick County’s animal control division to speak with a couple of animal control officers recently. After all, they see their fair share of dogs, good and bad. One of the officers I spoke with, Mike Douglas, owns a pit bull himself. He says it’s the owners, not the dogs, who are at fault when it comes to the behavior of their dogs. I spoke to four control officers, and without fail no one bad-mouthed the breed.

I am not discounting the tragedies with dogs that we hear and read about in the press — the child who was killed by the family dog, or a renegade dog who got loose from his yard and attacked a bystander. These are sensational stories and they get our attention. But what doesn’t get our attention is what’s behind them.

Did we know that the owner of this dog kept him in an enclosure for 12 hours a day? Did we know that the dog was disciplined with a belt or was beaten when he did something wrong? No, we didn’t hear that. We just heard about the attack.

He may have a point. Two 190-pound dogs recently broke free in the Northeast neighborhood of Trinidad and attacked a group of children. The dogs weren’t pit bulls, though, but rather Cane Corsos. (The man who saved the children is a Nats employee and was recently honored by Mayor Vince Gray.)

Locally, Prince George’s County has maintained a ban on pit bulls since 1996. In 2001, the D.C. Council similarly tried to ban pit bulls and increase penalties on attacks involving them, but the measure never passed.