Those who face animal charges regarding animal abuse/killings should face harsher sentencing.

Hello there, welcome to this debate. First off, I want to make this a two round debate. 24 hours to argue each round with a max of 10,000 characters. First round is acceptance and arguments, and second round is rebuttals and clarification. I am on the pro side for the contention that people should face more severe sentencing when it comes to animal abuse, especially if one was to kill a animal. I realize this needs to be narrowed down because of hunting and all the other things. So to limit the animals we will be debating over, they will consist of dogs, cats, and wild endangered animals. Argument 1. Animals are of more value than we place on them. To start this off, I think the majority would agree that we do not value animal life as much as we should, especially our own pets. It's so bad that we give people who kill their pets, or neighbors pets a light sentence that is under a year. Yes, if you go and kill your neighbors dog, you'll only receive at least 6 months in jail and I find that highly wrong on different accounts regarding A: The killing of the animal B: The crime does not fit the sentencing and C: The morality of preferring our own over animals To give you an idea, animals can be used for many things, dogs can be used to search for drugs, bombs, protection, hunting, blindness, and other health reasons, and overall just many different things. Dogs can also be better companions than humans, and even more likeable at times cause the dog for the most part is loyal and always by your side. The dog can sometime sense how you feel on good or bad days and is happy to see you generally when you come home from work. I'd say just this alone is all taken for granted by most owners and people for what dogs are capable of. I'd argue and say dogs, even cats can be smarter than some humans. They can go outside when it's cold and come right back in due to it being so cold. While they may not have a basic understanding of what's wrong from right (even some humans clearly don't) they do know sometimes the consequences of their actions. For example horse racing and training. Trainers normally use whips on horses to teach them to go faster, or to teach them other things. So all it takes is waving your whip in front of the horse to make it go faster, and scare it. Animals can be trained like that, so we really undervalue their feelings that they cannot express like we do, and by no fault of their own, they therefore are discarded like trash when they die. So to me, we undervalue animals greatly and do not appreciate them as much as we should. Again by animals, I mean dogs, cats, endangered species and such although all animals in the animal kingdom are nearly worth arguing for but the others are sadly excluded for this debate because I do not want to get into the hunting arguments about hunters and their morality of killing animals for the sport, trophy, food and such. I highly doubt a good number of hunters even eat what they kill, especially coon hunters, but that's irrelevant for this debate, now to get back on track I want to go over some other arguments. Argument 2: People who abuse animals, and kill them are far more likely to be a danger to society. This argument here is something I believe most would agree on, but the thing is, it should be looked at when you argue these debates because it's something very important that easily gets overlooked. People who abuse animals seem to get more violent in the end, and that abuse begins to find its way onto other people seeing that they are just given slaps on the wrist when it comes to animals charges. This teaches them basically nothing wrong from right and gives them little time to even think about what they done as they soon go back home within a year more aggressive than ever before due to being in jail which probably most likely placed them in the general jail population and offered them no mental evaluations and care that they truly need but I'll talk more about that soon. Would you want your kids near someone who beats the hell out of animals day after day and tortures them? There was a guy who tortured his girlfriends dog for months on end before finally killing it and only got a sentence under a year and got out with threats that he will soon find and kill her. There are tons of these stories if you search the net. Both the first two arguments can be linked together. Argument 3: I believe these people who do such horrible things to these animals need longer sentencing. I do not want to say give them life although personally, I wouldn't feel sorry for them, but give them at least up to 15 years and place them in the mental solitary to be evaluated. Reason being, it's a fact that prisons and such do not really rehabilitate inmates or a good majority of them, especially violent inmates. Tests from the Pelican Bay prison show the inmates who were extremely violent and stuck into the Shu/hole program and got moved to a mental solitary isolation with a little more freedom but care and treatments progressed well enough to make it back into the general inmate popular with the exception of 2007 I believe where a inmate came out from the mental institution and murdered another inmate but the majority of the psychological treatments and talks daily helped improved most inmates. A short sentencing for something of domestic violence means nothing to the inmate and only fuels them to be more aggressive. A longer sentencing would keep society safer for longer, and give the inmate more time. As I said a lot of inmates don't get rehabilitated from being in prison, but those who are in longer have a different outlook than someone who walks right back after in a few months after getting in. I also offered the thought of putting them into the mental solitary program which has been beneficial to most inmates in which I'd say is a entire other discussion and something the US should strive for as it creates more job opportunities, and helps better the inmate as a person with some exceptions but again, that's another debate for another day. Now one of the things I didn't touch on was B, and C at the very beginning of my debate. To refresh your memory, I said that B: The crime does not fit the sentencing and C: We have more so a double standard and hold a high morality of our own kind. When you punch someone, you go to jail whether it be a day, month or a few months but when you kill someone, you typically face life or death. Well, when it comes to animals, the sentencing is laughable and depressing all at the same time because it just shows how much we do not care as people for the animal who was abused or killed in the worst way possible. How is torturing an animal for a week straight, and setting it on fire only like a 6 month sentencing? If this was a human, the murderer would be sentenced to death in most causes for those gruesome crimes. Are we really that much better than these animals all of a sudden? Animals that can be loyal, and friendly, and caring for their owners, and can behave better if taught to? Last I checked, humans were animals, just highly developed. We belong in the mammal kingdom too, so to say we aren't animals is quite comical to me but look at how high we hold our own standards to not even consider the thought of us being animals? An animal shouldn't be treated like dirt because it's different. That goes for people too, but I digress. Animals like dogs and cats can express emotion and so much more. They too fear for their well being when danger is present. They too want to have a life without suffering just like us, but the difference is they aren't as developed and just look at how horrible some of these cases truly are. You have a guy breaking and entering someones home and slaughters their pet that does not belong to him. He should face more severe charges than just a year, he could have killed the owners if you think about it if they were present. Yet we give him less than a year in 90% of the cases knowing he will soon go back to his ways and do it all over again. Why is that? Just cause we are more developed? We're still animals, we got no right to think we are better, and I think if animals could talk and have the same brain as we do, they'd build a social construct and find new morale in life, but of course we will never know that for an extremely long time although there have been studies that show how animals can form pacts and have a certain leadership and loyalty in place. So let's just give our human kind a slap on the wrist, send him back out. That doesn't fit the crime he did, especially if it were a more gruesome crime and can you imagine the fear of these animals that get abused and killed from these sick monsters? Just because we developed doesn't mean we aren't animals, and some people clearly show they can be such animals and need to be treated like one. The argument and rebuttal against this is well, animals kill one another and that is fine but you are complaining about us killing them? Yes I am. Animals kill others because they do not know no better, and aren't trained well yadda yadda but I'll get more into this in round 2 cause whoever accepts this challenge will come swinging with this argument an rebuttal. To close this round. I made more than enough arguments for why animals should be considered near even terms when it comes to humans and why it's bad just to give humans a slap on a wrist that abuse them. There are tons more arguments that can be made but I'll end this round on a high note by saying: "Do unto others as you would want them to do to you".