Fair enough. But the federal law passed earlier this month, so I doubt whether the relevant statutes have even been drawn up. More generally, there have been calls in New Mexico to put together a $200,000 per year office in charge of animal cruelty, as well as complaints that these misdemeanor busts are waste of time. Cite.
I’m thinking that Melchior has a decent argument (to review: BRAAWK, BRAAAWK.) Attaching knives to chickens isn’t my idea of a good time, but frankly it’s rather low on the list of moral outrages. A couple of thousand fighting birds is less than a millionth of the 9 billion cluckers that are stuffed into wire pens and transformed into food nuggets every year. I mean it feels wrong: cockfighting was banned in 11 statesprior to 1880 for heaven’s sakes. But hysteria and large scale investigations seem to me to be disproportionate.
However. Cockfighting is illegal and therefore complements other illegal activity. Keep in mind though that the latest bust involved an operation that might have hosted an event all of 6 times per year. Still, I’m not surprised that a few people smoked the Devil’s weed and drunk alcohol served without a license during the spectacle and there was gambling and worse, assholes. Assholes can be violent: so pass laws to keep kids away. I would think a $2500 fine would do that though for both guardians and organizers. The $250,000 fine in the OP still seems disproportionate. We do have child protection laws after all.
A 2012 Salon article describes the Human Society professionals who pushed for current legislation and a Indiana father and possible bullshit artist named Bo who was busted for raising cockfighting birds and given, “18 months probation and a $1,730 fee to be paid to the local humane shelter to cover the cost of caring for the cocks prior to their death.” That sounds ok to me. Message: knock it off. http://www.salon.com/2012/01/22/cockfighting_barbarism_or_tradition/
Incidentally, cockfighting has been in decline for a while, judging from feed store sales in cockfighting locals and falling subscriptions to G------- magazine. 2008 cite.
I dunno, I think it’s reasonable to have stiffer punishment for bloodsports involving social mammals than for bird-brains. And special protection for mammals who formed an ancestral symbiotic relationship with humans.
Again, you seem to fundamentally misunderstand the difference between an imposed sentence and the potential maximum sentence. Until someone is actually sentenced to the $250,000 maximum fine or a year in jail for just watching, it is premature to bitch about it.
However much some people may find it distasteful, I see no reason whatsoever to prohibit it. After all, gladiators used to fight to the death in the Roman arena. These are chickens! BWAWK BWAWK!!!
:rolleyes:
Some laws are passed just because some people are so annoying that lawmakers just want to shut them up. There should be no enforcement of such laws.
C’mon. I’m saying it’s 2 orders of magnitude disproportionate. Divide by 20 and it’s still out of whack. And the $100,000 fine for watching is 2-3 orders off the reservation.
I can imagine a $250,000 fine for littering/industrial dumping. I can imagine that for disturbing the peace/inciting a riot. But not for exposing a child to entertainment that is decidedly not family friendly but easily available on the internet. This isn’t gerbil crushing.
Or maybe it is:
I vacillate in this thread without apology: I’m still sifting through the info. Perhaps the real problem isn’t hurting roosters, it’s aiding and abetting assholes. Those who enjoy watching and betting on cockfights are indulging their el sicko nature and need to be guided to more uplifting activities like pay per view MMA fights and gonzo pr)n. So do they deserve maybe a $1000 fine on a 2nd offense?
Upthread Bo the family man and convicted cockfight breeder attended church in his spare time. So maybe we have the wrong idea about those good 'ol boys. Or the right one. I dunno. I will say that the anti-cockfighter coalition’s webpage doesn’t fill me with shock and horror, though the spectacle sounds kinda gross to me.
This is a crappy argument. Past atrocities should not guide current practice.
I think there’s something to this. But also, there are few if any lawmakers who want to stand up and say that one activity or another is bad but not that bad. Doing that is called a gaffe. In that light, this is one of those issues that can be captured by a narrow pressure group. Then again, cockfighters have a pressure group as well apparently, though it is even tinier.
Why can’t they hire a Washington lobbyist like Real Americans do?
I think child porn is the only thing that’s treated in a similar manner to this bill. And that’s dangerous–because it suggests that cock fighting is morally equivalent to child porn.
People’s opinions differ on things like that. If being “totally unacceptable for a decent society” in some people’s minds were the ONLY criterion, abortion would be outlawed.
Based on actual SCOTUS decisions, the reasoning would be that a strictly-local cock fight displaces cocks that would otherwise be transported across state lines to fight. Thus the Commerce Clause.
What I find interesting is that the law passed without any conservative push back. So much for federalism or small government. One might almost think that those are Republican slogans to excite the rubes, rather than criteria applied to legislation. Rand and Ron Paul were nowhere to be seen, though admittedly Rand voted against the entire farm bill.
I couldn’t find any of the usual liberal outlets advancing this either. The advocates seem to be limited to the Humane Society and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. And PETA of course, though they didn’t play a big role. More news
A cockfight gone wrong: Man stabbed to death by rooster after cockfight.