I don’t agree. Logical fallacies are not simply an esoteric debate protocol, DrDeth. They are common argumentative techniques that sound convincing on their surface but do not reliably yield accurate analysis. The idea in identifying them is not to win scoring points, but to illustrate the lack of logical strength in the argument in play.
Similarly, your attack on the use of logical fallacies suggests your arguments rest on grounds that are not logically sound, and you would prefer that this deficiency not be highlighted.
But that’s why I posted the photo gallery. You’re making my point for me: Bowhunting has too high of a non-lethal wound rate to be considered a humane method of killing. It doesn’t matter if a particular incident just happened to be a clean quick kill; the method itself has to be determined as cruel or not cruel in advance of the act. Or are you saying that only bad shots are crimes, but if you make a lucky hit you avoid prosecution? Do any laws work that way?
When they changed the law to include feral cats they changed the language from just “kill” to “kill in a cruel manner”, but I didn’t see a specific list of methods anywhere. How are people supposed to know in advance? Is it determined in court after the fact?
I appreciate it, and apologies to your wife. I used to work with a lawyer who always yelled at me to stop asking questions there were no answers to.
I tried to find out as well, and it’s been pretty frustrating. Shouldn’t laws be clear if they expect people to obey them? I found a few hunter forums and they were arguing over it too. It’s too late to call now, but if we don’t get a clear answer this weekend I think I’ll call Texas on Monday. I have to know now!
I was thinking it can’t be legal, because it was proposed in a few other states to cull the population, and the animals welfare people went crazy and shut it down; if it was legal in Texas you’d think they would be fighting it.
Some animal rescue sites are using the logic that if a feral has no owner, you can never get permission from someone, so you can never kill them. The funny part is that some hunters on the forums accepted that logic. But most don’t care about legalities - I’m sure you know what “SSS” means to a hunter - and this vet would have got away with it too, if she wasn’t stupid enough to brag about it online.
So what about feral or stray dogs? Ferrets? Is anything not on the list considered fair game?
The stated goal of the Straight Dope is fighting ignorance. But this is the Straight Dope Message Board, which has different goals in different forums. The BBQ pit exists to allow for flaming, which does not correlate well with fighting ignorance. Flaming people tends to result in people defending their viewpoints, since pissing people off makes them tned to fight to win and not to be accurate.
This forum is for getting out your frustrations. When ignorance fighting happens, it’s just due to the general community, and not due to any goals of the forum.
Nothing wrong with Bricker fighting ignorance here, but he does need to lower his expectations of what will be appreciated.
This has actually become a legal issue. A man who was feeding a cat in an alley was charged with animal abuse when the cat was injured, he couldn’t afford the vet care, and the animal died.
Sure. Vehicular manslaughter is only charged if you drive drunk and kill someone. It’s always dangerous, but only death triggers manslaughter. Of course, there are also other laws that are violated by driving drunk even if no one is injured. But in this instance, so far as I can find, there are no other laws in play.
The law specifies what “cruel” means: a manner that causes or permits unjustified or unwarranted pain or suffering. Whether a particular amount of pain is unwarranted would be for a court to decide.
In criminal law, the rule is that the law is strictly construed against the state. In other words, the criminal law must always give fair notice to an ordinary person of ordinary intelligence what conduct is prohibited.
This does not mean that every possible method of killing must be specified, though. The legislature is certainly free to forbid a specific method, but they are also free to simply criminalize any method if it ends up causing unwarranted pain, and leave for an individual finder of fact to determine if the facts of a specific case rise to the level of “unwarranted.” Again, though, in the case of virtually instant death, there wouldn’t be a way for the finder of fact to support a finding of “unwarranted” amount of pain.
If I say, “If A is true, then B is true. And if B is true, then C is true. Therefore, if A is true, we know C is true,” would you say this is a concept? I have no idea what you imagine “concept” might mean, and how a “concept” is somehow immune to fallacious argument.
It’s not the same thing at all. This animal cruelty law is the opposite of your example: The equivalent example would be if the DWI law made vehicular manslaughter legal, as long as it was quick and painless. Which would be ridiculous. There is no equivalent law.
Changing the language to “protect” feral cats was basically a sham, because it still allows you to take it upon yourself to kill a cat. If it turns out to be unwarranted or cruel, we decide that after the fact, after the animal is dead or injured.
No, logical fallacies are methods of reasoning which will lead to logically incorrect conclusions, and are used in any context in which logic is important.
It’s absolutely astonishing that even you don’t know this. It certainly puts a permanent pall over any argument you try to make from now on, as you’ve just openly admitted that you don’t know how logic works.
I mean, not that anyone who’s read more than four or five of your posts needs the tip, but it’s always nice to have it in writing. I expect this exchange is going to be referenced quite a lot whenever you drop trou in a thread and leave another steaming pile of stupid.
That’s absolutely incorrect, but extremely illustrative. I had assumed your confusion was based on a lack of information. It begins to look like you have an active antipathy towards correct logical reasoning.
The vehicular manslaughter law doesn’t make DWI illegal, though. There’s another law that does that. The vehicular manslaughter law says that if you drive drunk and have an accident which kills someone, the state can presume your culpable intent. But if no one dies, the law doesn’t punish you.
The difference in that example is that there exists ANOTHER law which punishes (to a lesser degree) the conduct of driving drunk at all.
Here, we have the analogy of the manslaughter law in the law that punishes a cruel killing, but we don’t also have a separate analogy for the DWI law that provides some lesser punishment for killing even without cruelty.
Yes. The purpose of the law was not to save the lives of feral cats, in my opinion, but to punish those who would deliberately torture cats. The law was not intended, in my opinion, to forbid “clean and quick,” kills of feral cats. Indeed, a law that forbid all kills would require numerous exceptions for overcrowded shelters and trap-and-kill programs.
I cited a bunch of cases above that involved cruelty convictions. But all of them involved … well … cruelty, unmistakeable infliction of pain preceding death.
I can’t find any convictions for the death of a feral animal where the death was quick and essentially painless.
What makes it strange to me is that in the case of the cat, the intent is the same, the action is the same, but **how **the cat dies makes it the difference between a crime and not-crime. It’s seems more like “Killing someone with your car will be legal, even if done deliberately, if the person dies painlessly. in that case, you’re scotfree. But if the person lingers for a few minutes, then it’s a crime.” The intent is the same, the weapon is the same, the shot is the same – whether or not it’s illegal depends entirely on the victim. Whether the victim dies quickly or not determines the crime.
Yes, I know that cats aren’t people, and I am not trying to equate the two. But for me the vehicular manslaughter comparison doesn’t work. Are there any similar crimes where everything-- including intent-- are the same but the legality changes from “yea” to “nay” based on the victim’s reaction?
I suppose if the intent is to playfully punch someone, the reaction changes it from “all in fun” to “assault” if the victim files charges.
Before **Bricker **corrects me, I suppose in the manslaughter case, the intent (“Don’t kill someone, make it home safely”) is the same in both cases. So is the weapon. For some reason I am just having a hard time wrapping my head around it. Maybe the DUI laws are interfering with my grasp-- because if you maim someone, it’s still a crime, though it’s not manslaughter. So it’s still a crime, even if someone doesn’t die.
Sure. I reach out and cop a quick feel of the nice ass of the woman next to me in the supermarket. It’s my wife, and there’s no crime; it’s the deacon’s wife, and it’s a crime.
Sorry for posting up about crossbow hunting of cats (in Texas) being illegal - I had thought I’d seen a link posted by someone else on this thread. And, weirdly, until I mentioned it, everyone - including Bricker - was acting as if it were definitely true too.
Intent would make a difference there, though. If your intent was to grab your wife’s ass, and you didn’t realise she’d moved, that’s different to grabbing someone else’s ass on purpose.
However, I can think of at least one act where the reaction of the victim makes a difference: if you strike someone with a whip, in many places that’s legal if they wanted you to, as in S&M. Not so legal otherwise.
I used to work with a lawyer who always yelled at me to stop asking questions there were no answers to.