Hate to get involved in your little mind game hissy fit. Your antagonist replied “...If you can’t understand the difference between hunting and a criminal slashing up your animal in your house, how many people here do you think are going to believe that they are equivalent acts? Really?.. “
That’s really as clear as it gets. “...stupid and indefensible...” is an appropriate retort and expected when it’s patently clear by the comments on this thread that you’ve lost whatever argument you were trying to provoke.
In my opinion,not only should purposely torturing a helpless animal, regardless of age, be equated with purposely murdering a human being, I think a punishment applying the worst revenge fantasy of the animal’s owner or the human being’s loved one(s)would be wonderfully and satisfyingly appropriate.
This will never happen, of course, but what kind of society have we become when the level of abuse meted out to a helpless animal is usually punished by the equivalent of a slap on the wrist?
Our justice system (in theory) purposely has been wisely set up to remove emotion from the system. As of late, Liberalism (emotion) has been allowed to intrude, and punishments similar to the one you proposed, meted out according to the judges feelings.
I think that's one of the big reasons people have such a low opinion of our justice system. A system that passes judgment on emotion can not only pass out severe punishments, as the one you propose, but it can also pass out light sentences such as the one giving the Black Panthers a pass and no penalty for threatening voters with violence, as happened in 2008.
But back to my original question; If the death penalty is what is called for in the torture of an animal, what is the proper punishment for killing a human?
Or, to expand on the question, what is the proper punishment for someone who causes a human to be confined to a wheelchair for life?