Animal cruelty may seem to be the issue in the USA, but there are two points to the issue.
The first point is the property question. If the animal is your property, you have the right to do with your property as you wish. Property rights are the foundation of all USA law. People don't:
A. Consider property rights in many court cases;
B. Realize that animal rights are not to be considered outside of property rights of the owner;
C. Think about what is happening when property rights are taken away from anyone.
If Government can take away property rights from owners under some particular circumstance, where will they stop? If you become property of Government because property rights of self are taken away, then Government has become a dictatorial Communism.
The second point is, if a person has a problem with someone else harming his own animal in what might be considered a bad, painful, hurtful, inhumane way, the problem shouldn't be the person and his property (animal). The question should revolve around that he did it in public, and it harmed the emotions of a bystander.
The owner has the right to do with his property as he wishes. But he doesn't have the right to harm the emotions of another person by making that person watch how shamefully he treats his property.
The issue is property. It is a person damaging the emotional property of a bystander. It is NOT a property owner damaging his own property, the animal.
In other words, if you need to beat your property, do it in private, so you don't hurt the feelings of other people.
Animal isn't an inanimate object or an piece of land to be considered a property... It's an unarmed creature, also like some humans can be in the same unarmed animal's condition (like old people, children, mental deficients). And if you beat these people there will be consequences, and doesn't matter if it's inside your house or in any other private place, the same goes for animals.
Lives aren't property of anyone. In the case of animals the owner accepts the role of protector, defender and loyal friend of the animal. If this role isn't being followed correctly, the animal must be gotten from this owner's hands, like children are gotten from the parents hands when they suffer abuse.
Notice that I said "USA."
If you are in the USA, just go out and steal an animal from a person who treats it poorly, just so you can treat it better, and find out that it is property, the hard way.
Ah, well, I didn't know things work this way in the USA. It's a pitty though.
In my country it's 3-12 months in the jail or a fine for who harms animals or abandon them.
The problem is that knowing these laws, the abuser usually takes the car and the animal, goes far away from his home and left the animal on the road, near other's houses. Then accelerate the car and go away faster as possible...
The animal starts starving abandoned on the road, being rejected by the near houses as people have already animals.
And it's hard to track who abandoned the animal on the road, as it happens fast and usually in desolate areas, without witnesses.
No it isn't a pity. It's called freedom.
The point is entirely this. If somebody can control your freedom, they can control you. Why stop at animals? Become a Communistic Dictatorship, where they control what color socks you wear, and how many breaths of air you take.
Your choice. Be free, or be a slave.
If the animal isn't yours, then don't treat it good or bad, until you get permission from the owner.
And about the animal's freedom? No one wants to be injured (including the animals). Those who are injured and can't scape from this reality
don't have freedom!
You are showing a communist behavior with the animals! You control animal's freedom, so you control them! For these injured animals it's like to live in a junk communist/socialist house, where they aren't respected and treated as they should be.
The real choice humans can take here are: to be a
communist enslaver or to be a
decent person.
We are talking about lives, and lives don't belong to any man in this world.
Do you think that plants aren't alive? If you feel so strongly, perhaps you should go eat dirt or sand or rocks.
If animals are your property, then you can do with them what you want. If someone else tries to dictate what you can do with your property, then they are making a slave of you. If you are a slave, then you are the property of someone else, and he can do what he wants with you. You are his property.
There is a big difference between killing for something useful, like to eat, without making the animal (and why not the plant) suffer, and harming, killing for sadistic reasons just to give pleasure to a psychopath's mind, what shouldn't be allowed.
And this kind of people belong in jail.
Even the hunters, that need meat to eat and furs to craft stuff and to sell show respect for the animals they kill.
But I believe you won't accept it, as you don't see animals as living creatures, but just
things.
I hope someday you will be able to see further your short horizon...
The fact that people who punish their animals for no reason are base and foolish people, doesn't take away the fact of their freedom to do with their property what they want.
If somebody beats his animal, and if it hurts your feelings, tell him to stop doing it in your presence. Then move away so that you won't see it happening. This way you won't get your feelings hurt.
If he flaunts the beating of his animal in your presence, in ways that you can't avoid seeing or hearing, then take him to court for hurting you... not for managing his property.
If you want to take away property rights of other people, or make property rights of others fit your definition or theme in life, then you are denying freedom to PEOPLE, and are worse than one who beats his property.
