Dog fighting and fondling young children are most definitely on different levels.
Blam. I see where the comparison comes from, but they are two entirely different types of inappropriate and harmful conduct, and to attempt to draw any parallel between the two to make a point is foolish. It's like when homophobes try to justify not allowing gays to marry because they claim it would open the door to legal incest/bestiality/etc.
Owning one animal as a pet is different that having a kennel full of pitbulls, and I get the feeling it's gonna be tough for Vick to get any kind of underground crime circle going.
He's never going to get the kind of time and privacy to even attempt something like that again if he ever had another dog as a pet. Seriously, does anything think the media wouldn't (pardon the term) hound him anytime he so much as took the dog out to piss and shit? I think a lot of people need to investigate what he was charged with and what he was guilty of, because he's not going to be able to start an underground dog fight crime circle off of one dog.
We do live in the nation of second chances, and I'm willing to give Vick a second chance. Just because he was involved in dog fighting doesn't mean he still didn't care about his dogs, and from everything I've read Vick has always "loved" animals. He may have been brought up thinking that Dog Fighting was a normal part of life, but that doesn't mean he still can't care for an animal.
Agreed. His crimes were reprehensible, and they will follow him for the rest of his career and his lifetime, and rightfully so. But he's not some Chester Molester, hiding out in his van by the neighborhood park, struggling to contain his urge to go snatch up a child. At worst, give him some court-appointed dog training and handling classes or something. I see no immediate danger to one dog under his care that any other dog in any other home in America would be subject to.
No one is disputing that, but they are comparable in this case, and the reason for the correlation is relevant.
No, they aren't. We'll get back to this at the end.
As difficult as it may be for him to return to his old ways, he wasn't convicted of simply running the fighting ring he was convicted of brutalizing the animals. He hung dogs with extension cords, beat their bodies, electrocuted them and drowned losers in a shallow pit of water by using his own body weight to hold them under there's a degree of severity you are not taking into account here that matters very much. He brutalized these animals, which tells me that something in his brain found pleasure in torturing animals. The number of them is irrelevant, as he could possibly be just as brutal and savage to one as he was to dozens, especially living with it on his own in his own home.
So now your emotional reaction and conclusion to the situation is grounds to determine the liberties of another? For the record, the "official" stats given are 6-8 dogs hung or drown tallied up to Vick personally. There is no mention of his being present during the day-to-day handling of the dogs, and much of his end of the operation was in the funding and in the promotion. There is no mention of him being present during the "training" off the dogs; Tony Taylor was found to be the man who ran operations and led in training both the animals and the other defendants. Permits and licenses had to be obtained for any of them to set up the kind of operation they had in place to start with. I don't think he's going to be able to obtain those in the future, so I don't see how there's any risk, as starting a dog fighting ring in your living room would be pointless (no proper equipment, no opportunity to make any money off of it) and stupid (goodbye living room, and then some).
Vick has his second chance already it's called his life. There's no reason to start giving the man the same privileges he'd have had prior to his conviction, just as there's no reason to do so for ChoMo's.
Funny, I don't recall those being privileges that were ever officially taken away.
Anyway, back to why "ChoMo's" are a different situation. Vick wasn't a serial murderer of dogs, as per the legal definition of a serial killer. He wasn't a mass murderer either. His objective very clearly wasn't to set out and start torturing animals for fun; his goal was to be in on a business for profit. That's not to say that I think running a dog fighting ring and/or animal cruelty in any shape or form is acceptable, but I don't think you should be classifying him as an uncontrollable predator (the comparison you are trying to make with Child Abusers) when really his actions are closer to that of "standard" homicide associated with underground business and gang/mafia type situations. Detestable all the same, but not much in common enough to warrant comparison beyond that. Convicted murderers are and have been legally allowed to raise children, but oddly those situations don't draw as much national attention an scorn as when a public figure is involved. Are we really reacting with fairness and justice in mind, or are we just looking for an easy target?
