And there's just this TINY difference that hunting doesn't involve torturing the animals.

for fun even

While I like neither, one is actually, ya know, fucking LEGAL.

It's more than that, though. They're not remotely the same thing, and dog fighting has consequences that go beyond the extreme cruelty of it. I got into a discussion on this on a blog recently where people were talking about how it's no worse than fox hunting only for poor people, or some such idiocy.

I think this is right on: From Michigan State College of Law - [link]

From an animal welfare standpoint, dog-fighting is one of the most serious forms of animal abuse, not only for the heinous acts of violence that the dogs endure during and after the fights, but because they literally suffer their entire lives. Dogs that are born, bought or stolen for fighting are often neglected and abused from the start. Most spend their entire lives alone on chains or in cages and only know the attention of a human when they are being trained to fight and they only know the company of other animals in the context of being trained to kill them. Most dogs spend their entire lives without adequate food, water, or shelter. They are not perceived as sentient beings capable of suffering, rather they are commodities that exist for the sole purpose of making the owner money and prestige. The prevailing mind set among dog fighters is that the more the dog suffers, the tougher he will become, and the better fighter he will be. The fighting dogs are not the only victims of heinous cruelty. Many of the training methods involve torturing and killing of other innocent animals. Often pets are stolen or otherwise obtained to be used as live bait in training exercises to improve the dogs’ endurance, strength, or fighting ability. If the bait animals are still alive after the training sessions, they are usually given to the dogs as a reward, and the dogs finish killing them.

The collective American conscience has long been repulsed by the undeniable brutality within the culture of dogfighting, but the law enforcement community has been regrettably lax in appreciating the full scope and gravity of the problem. Historically, the crime of dog-fighting was considered an isolated animal welfare issue, and as such was ignored, denied, or disregarded by law enforcement. Within the last decade, however a growing body of legal and empirical evidence has emerged exposing the clandestine culture of dog-fighting and its nexus with other crimes and community violence. Dog fighters are violent criminals that engage in a whole host of peripheral criminal activities. Many are heavily involved in organized crime, racketeering, drug distribution, or gangs, and they arrange and attend the fights as a forum for gambling and drug trafficking. Many communities have been morally, socially and culturally scarred by the menacing pestilence of dogfighting for generations. From a very early age, children in those communities are routinely exposed to the unfathomable violence that is inherent within the blood sport. Even seasoned law enforcement agents are consistently appalled by the atrocities that they encounter before, during, and after dog fights, yet the children that grow up exposed to it are conditioned to believe that the violence is normal. Those children are systematically desensitized to the suffering, and ultimately become criminalized.

(I'd like to see that last phrase qualified or better explained, but otherwise, yeah.)

(FWIW, in some ways I'm more comfortable with eating the venison from my brother and nephew's deer hunting than with ordinary beef, pork, and chicken from the grocery store, because I figure the deer lived a natural and happy life until David or Eric shot it, unlike the factory-farmed animal.)

I am with Susan on this.

Great article, brenda. Thank you.

Torture may occur in hunting. A shot that wounds without killing, for example. But it generally isn't the point of hunting the way it is with dogfighting.

I can't criticize hunting for food. Eating is a pretty necessary activity. Hunting for trophies seems more morally questionable to me.

And to follow a thread Aimee started, White might think about efforts to make dogfighting and hunting equally legal or illegal.

One of my goals for when we get through our present financial bottleneck is to start buying all our meat, poultry, eggs, and dairy products from some of the local organic, grass-fed, free-range farms. I figure it's more humane for the animals and healthier for us--but the cost is such we can't make the switch right away. (I know, I know, we could become vegetarians, but so far my guilt/squick over factory farming practices hasn't quite reached that threshold.)

They're not remotely the same thing, and dog fighting has consequences that go beyond the extreme cruelty of it.

That's why the RICO charges (which he avoided with his plea) were so interesting.

It took an NFL player involved to do it (maybe it HAS happened before?), but with RICO law enforcement could decimate dog fighting like they did the mob. (If they felt like it, which they might now).

I think there is a fair argument to be made that they haven't because it only involved populations they consider beneath their notice -- just a bunch of "thugs". It would be interesting to see dog fighting do to gangs what tax evasion did to the mob.

And to follow a thread Aimee started, White might think about efforts to make dogfighting and hunting equally legal or illegal.

Yeah. I mean, to bring it back to Ray Lewis, you see people saying that it's a travesty for Vick to be going to prison and getting so much neg press when Lewis didn't even miss a [real] game.

Well, no. The travesty was the Ray Lewis part, not the Vick.

Even seasoned law enforcement agents are consistently appalled by the atrocities that they encounter before, during, and after dog fights, yet the children that grow up exposed to it are conditioned to believe that the violence is normal. Those children are systematically desensitized to the suffering, and ultimately become criminalized.

I had some pretty shocking conversations along these lines when I volunteered 'in the big house.' One of the inmates (who was in for murder, not dog fighting, though he had run a book for a ring somewhere in MD) talked about how expendable his 3 year old daughter was.

I asked how he would feel if his little girl got caught up in the things he'd done (crack not the least of them). His reply? "Then she'll die. Everybody dies."

His reply? "Then she'll die. Everybody dies."

He's not wrong, she sighed cynically and sadly.

I've helped my dad butcher deer that we ended up eating. That is nothing compared to the images I saw on Real Sports in their expose on dogfighting--which included a family pet that had its back hip smashed before being tossed into the ring as "bait" so it wouldn't injure the pitbull too badly.

Killing an animal for food is acceptable to me. Laughing, smiling and waging bets as two animals rip each other apart is just beyond sick.