I can agree with that conceptually, but logic does not always address that which makes us human, which is why the idea of a perfect balance between logic and emotion is what the legal system ought to strive for.
First, a cow can provide companionship of sorts, but it’s no where NEAR the same as a dog.
The idea that an answer can be logical and still be wrong is a difficult one to stomach, and don’t even get me started on fairness. Logic and fairness are often apart, simply because what’s ‘fair’ is subjective. The truth is that in order for an answer to be truly ‘right’ that answer must meet the criteria of the situation and the individuals you’re applying it to. Saying that shooting a puppy 10 times to make a belt out of it is, technically and logically no different that shooting a cow 10 times and making steaks, gloves, a jacket and shoes out of it. But the component that makes humans, well, human is the ability to emote, to feel and then to act on that feeling for what can be construed as the greater good. If we lose that, if we change the flesh and blood of emotion for the oil and steel of logic above all in all cases, then we as a race are lost.
I don’t believe I’ve stated anywhere in this thread that making a belt out of a puppy is a good or normal thing to do. What I’m taking issue with is this notion that there should be different standards for treatment of pets vs. other domesticated animals. Let me try to spell it out differently.
The only crime* you can commit against an animal is cruelty - the gratuitous causing of pain. Some animals have more capacity to feel pain than others, so this does warrant some differences in treatment. Go ahead and pull the wings off of flies, if you like, but don’t do the same to chickens. But pain is pain, and you’re just as cruel to torture a chicken as you are to torture a puppy regardless of the difference in photogenicness.
Anything else you might do to an animal isn’t a crime against that animal - but it might be a crime against a person. If I humanely kill my dog, that’s not a crime. If I humanely kill your dog, that is a crime - not against your dog, but against you. If I then tan my dog’s hide to make a belt, that’s certainly odd but it is obviously causes a dead dog no pain, so it cannot be cruelty. If I tan your dog’s hide to make a belt, in order to taunt you about my killing your dog (humanely), that’s not cruelty to the dog either, but it is being a giant flaming asshole towards you.
The species of the animal is utterly irrelevant - except insofar as human owners are more likely to develop emotional attachments to certain species of animals. And common perception of crimes against animals (or rather, against the owners of those animals) is going to be coloured by the assumptions we make about the likely emotional attachment of the owner to his/her pet. So if we hear about a gratuitous but humane killing of a dog, we assume that the dog’s owner was emotionally attached and that this is a significant crime against the owner, but if we hear about a gratuitous but humane killing of a calf, we assume that the calf’s owner had only a commercial interest in it and the crime is just like any other property crime with a similar dollar value. However, if in the first case it turns out that the dog’s owner had no particular attachment to the dog, while in the second the calf’s owner viewed it as a family pet, our assumptions are dead wrong and in fact the latter is a more serious crime than the former.
The twist in this story is that the owner of the dog killed it in order (allegedly) to get back at someone else. So setting aside the issue of whether the killing was humane (we have no way to know if the puppy died to the 1st bullet or the 10th), the killing and skinning wasn’t a crime against the owner. However, since the skinning & etc was apparently undertaken with the intent to cause emotional distress to a person, it is an offense (morally, if not legally) against that person. But not against the puppy.
*Throughout the post I’m using “crime” as shorthand for “morally deplorable act”. I’m not specifically not using it in the legal sense of the word.
What about the ones with Minbari souls? Huh?
Why is it worse to tan a pet than an animal you didn’t make into a pet? It’s ok to tan an ermine as long as you neglect it emotionally?
Yea you really are as dumb as a bag of hammers. **Miller **has your number. I didn’t say anything even remotely resembling that interpretation.
It’s called, ‘color’. You might want to live in a colorless world where no one mentions little details about people, but it makes for dreadfully boring copy.
/me picks something out of his teeth.
Hmm, what? Did you say something?
intention That’s it, from here on out I am dedicating my life to make sure you are brought to justice for sea kitten genocide!
I had a dogskin on my wall until it got too bald. I bought it in Greenland. I suppose I’m insane.
I still think that the sick thing they did was to kill the pup to hurt someone else. I would have felt the same if they killed a cow, not for food, but just to get back at someone. Actually there have just been a case of that here in Denmark. A man got angry because his neighbours cows strayed on his grounds. He went and killed one of the cows with a chainsaw. To me those cases are equally sick, in both cases the way of killing the animal is unnecessarily cruel, in both the main reason is to hurt someone.
Did you forget this ,or are you merely ignorant.
Killing a pet, no big deal. 10 shots bad. Is 9 ok. Perhaps your a 7 shot man. But it shows disregard for the life of a pet. It shows cruelty. To you, no big deal.