I believe that only God determines who will burn in hell. I respect your beliefs, but I don't think that any one of us can sentence anyone.

Jamie they don't deserve to rot in hell and you know it. Your willing to codemn them for one act of complete stupidity to a life of eternal damnation. That sounds like a fair trade to me. Do they deserved to be punished, of course they committed a crime, but what do you think is really the right course of action. If we lock them up for 20 years they'll come out and be useless to society. However, if we as a society, take the time to counsel these kids and educate them, we might make decent humans out of them. By simply putting them in jail we are taking the accountability out of our hands and just hoping that prison will fix them.... Wow i can't believe i agreed with somer, sorry somer will never happen again...:)

Well...we will disagree on this point then. The problem isn't that everyone will evolve in the same way but that some will. That's why I take offense when folks use words such as "every" and "all".

Sure it will....anyway, no offense taken, lol!

I think you are wrong about hunting, it causes a basic disconnect with animals, can cause a lack of compassion towards people. Everyones brain works differently, those kids, thinking like kids think, saw those horses the same way a game hunter would see a deer. Just a thrill kill, unfortunately some people get a thrill out of killing animals. In this case unfortunately the kids are buffoons

well, i can't speak for all hunters, just for myself, my husband and some others i know.
i know in our case it's not 'thrill killing' at all-altho for some it is. there are those who go out and kill a deer, cut off its antlers and leave the rest to rot. i have absolutely no respect for them at all.
we hunt for meat-no part gets wasted, i haven't shot a buck in years. and i don't shoot anything i don't eat. some kill anything that comes by. not me. we also fish-don't do that for thrills either, altho it can be thrilling....we eat everything we bring back from the river as well.

haha somer just normally we are in entirely diffrent ends of every issue, shows that everyone has something in common with every one else.

I honestly have never met a hunter who gets a thrill out of watching animals suffer. The only kinds of hunters I've ever been around enjoy hunting for the sport, enjoy the time spent outside and know that without hunting, deer etc. would be over populated and starve to death. I know a guy who has 30 walker coonhounds and he loves each one of them to death... they go hunting with him and he treats them like his children. Does that mean that he was taught to be a cold blooded killer because he hunts? I don't think so.

What these teens did was cold blooded, guys... no doubt about it. They need a harsher punishment than community service, sorry but they do.

what do you recommend cajun?

Absolutely...actually we all have more in common than different, it's just that the differences are usually the impetus for discussion/debate!

i know a lot of places, animal cruelty is still a misdemeanor-and it should not be. it should be handled like many other crimes, with different 'classes' depending on severity. much like stealing $500 worth of stuff is a class c, but stealing tens of millions is a class a-or however it's set up.

time in jail-maybe, depending on the severity of the crime. community service would be good, as would getting these kids some education! obviously for some reason they weren't taught about common decency.

I think that they should be put in prison for 10 years (without bail) and enrolled in one of those programs (where they are constantly monitored), but required to care for animals. Some of those programs work with dogs, some with horses etc. Point is, they should not be able to have the freedom by just doing community service. They need to learn about these animals and RESPECT them, and the only way they're going to respect them is by having them be the only recreation outside of prison that they get. I am a huge believer that a person who does this to animals DOES have a great potential for becoming a serial killer. If you can't respect an innocent animal who has done nothing to you, how are you going to respect a human being?

Don't generalize...not saying all hunters. If a person loves animals and respects life then they will treat animals with respect, hunter or not. But America's love affair with guns and killing stuff is a symptom of an overall lack of respect for life. We rationalize...ie: killing animals is good because we must control overpopulation. So...killing is justified to prevent other causes of death from predators, starvation etc. Humm...but if I kill a deer, that's my act, my responsibility, if a pack of wolves kill a deer...that's their act. So...I'm not responsible for my act since if I didn't do it someone or something else would? Seems to me I've heard that argument before....

Somer, would you rather kill an animal for food QUICKLY (which is what a REAL hunter does) or would you rather that animal die a slow death by starvation? I choose the former. By the way, wolf packs are dwindling as well due to humans. All of our development over their territory is slowly killing them off. They have nowhere to go... and guess what that means? Death for them too. To me, it's sad what this world is coming to.

The weakness of that is that society can't impose morality especially via punishment. The trick is to change their thought process, not just their behavior. being forced to care for animals could just as easily make them hate them as respect them.

it's a mess. we are part of nature, but we're supposed to 'rise above it'...we mess up the food chain, of which we are most definitely a part, but then some of us don't want us to be a part of it. we made ourselves the top predator, which means the prey is breeding like rabbits, since we've pretty much wiped out all the other predators--but then we're not supposed to do our part as the top predator?

most definitely a mess. we haven't been good stewards. and like every other subject-there is no agreement on how to be good stewards.

I have no problem with taking the life of an animal for food...if necessary! But again, same point...I can't justify killing by saying that if I don't someone or something else will!

That's very true, but I don't know of many people who can honestly "hate" an animal once they've been forced to spend that much time around them. That's a huge risk, I agree, but community service is looked at as a joke to many people and I'd rather have these kids behind bars.

that's true. can't make those kids love animals. but of course you hopefully punish the crime enough to keep them from behaving in such a way again. or from getting worse.

True! But as with all punishment, it only addresses the act not the cause.