On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 1:23 AM, P. J. Alling <[email protected]> wrote: > People are allowed to make bad decisions, that's what being free is all > about.
If I decide to kill a fellow human being, it's more than a bad decision it's also (in most cases) illegal. Most of us agree that laws that restrict our right to kill other people are good and necessary. I guess the question in the aftermath of this case is "what legal restrictions or regulations ought to be in place to protect society from wild exotic animals from running loose and creating mayhem, damage, injury and death?" Every law is a balancing act so one must weigh the right to public safety against the right to house dangerous animals. Then there's considering the rights of the animals (a bit radical here, I'll admit) to be kept and exploited without their consent (since they're not capable of communicating their consent or lack thereof to us humans). I would lean on the side of public safety and not keeping wild animals penned. I see no reason why anyone needs to have these sorts of animals, unless they've been rescued from small private zoos or private collections or labs or the like, and even in that case such sanctuaries should be very heavily regulated. If we allow private collections and zoos, the trade and exploitation of these poor wild beasts will continue and we'll have more situations like this, or like ones that we read about every so often where some small roadside private zoo is found to have sick and mistreated animals. cheers, frank -- "Sharpness is a bourgeois concept." -Henri Cartier-Bresson -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
