From: frank theriault
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.
No law can protect society from the deliberate criminal lawlessness of
those intent on committing murder.
I agree that these kind of operations should be well regulated, but
legal restrictions & regulations can only provide protection against
negligence. Laws can require the owner of exotic animals to provide
adequate safeguards to secure the animals for the protection of both the
community and the animals themselves.
But there's no way the law can prevent someone from deliberately opening
the cages and setting the animals loose on society.
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