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.

I am Cashmere's righteous indignation.

Everyone is already saying everything I might have said, only more wisely and briefly, so I'm just going to sit here nodding. And loathing dogfighting, and hoping that this whole fucked-up mess helps bring the whole foul enterprise down. The pleasure in violence and bloodsport, the cruelty to the dogs, the occasional theft of other people's small dogs and cats and kittens to teach the big dogs to kill -- there's nothing about it that isn't pure evil.

Not as evil as arranging the murder of your pregnant girlfriend, but, really, "less unspeakably vile and disgraceful to the entire human race" still isn't much of an endorsement.

As if I needed to be MORE neurotic about my dog...the second day I had him, a nefarious looking character walked up to me and said,"They steal dogs like that you know."

For bait.

He's pretty much never out of my sight.

White also said he didn't understand the uproar over dogfighting, when hunting deer and other animals is perfectly acceptable.

yes! This is the rhetorical fallacy known as tu quoque. Also, it's apples and oranges (another fallacy), as you all have clearly demonstrated.

And anyway, deer-hunting requires licensure, right? And safety measures, and ugly orange clothes, and other requirements to make it as safe as possible to the general public. Fighting dogs, OTOH, are by definition not made safe to the general public. (Watch those Animal Cops shows some time: the vast majority of rescued fighting dogs have to be put down, because they can't be untrained back to "nice doggy" territory.) Even if there weren't moral reasons to have laws against dog-fighting, there are plenty of civic reasons.

ICompletelyON, Tamara, much ~ma to you and your mother. I thought the universe was supposed to back off from Buffista relatives for a bit; there's been much too much sadness and stress and worry lately.

(Watch those Animal Cops shows some time: the vast majority of rescued fighting dogs have to be put down, because they can't be untrained back to "nice doggy" territory.)

I can't watch those shows anymore, especially the one in Detroit where dog fighting seems to be a regional pass time if the number of incidents they film is any indication.

yes! This is the rhetorical fallacy known as tu quoque.

t sniffle

Nutty skipped and skimmed me.