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Cockfighting and Dogfighting Create an Enormous
Body Count of Animals. The Human Toll is Surging, Too
Congress must hear from us to understand the urgency of the border crisis with animal fighting
Dear friend,
I consider passing the FIGHT Act, H.R. 2742/S. 1529, in Congress as urgent a priority as we have at the Center for a Humane Economy.
We know the list of victims is extraordinary when it comes to dogfighting and cockfighting.
*
Dogs
placed
in
a
pit,
succumbing
to
blood
loss,
or
perhaps
suffocation
when
an
animal
with
the
advantage
has
his
combatant
by
the
throat
and
just
won’t
let
go.
*
With
the
birds,
the
wounds
come
from
knives
and
curved
ice
picks
that
land
and
then
cut
in
a
blur.
The
weapons
are
affixed
to
the
animals’
legs
just
before
combat
begins.
Gouged
eyes,
punctured
hearts
or
lungs.
Slashing
wounds
that
open
up
arteries.
Make no mistake, these are terrible ways to die. Traumatic. Painful. Animals terror-stricken.
The men who stage these fights are intentional and malicious in allowing this violence and cruelty to befall innocent animals. Sometimes both the victor and the loser perish in the staged combat.
It’s perhaps the most despicable and malevolent form of animal cruelty in our nation. And that’s saying something.
People Die at Animal Fighting Derbies, Too
It turns out that non-human animals are not the only victims.
Just two weeks ago, at a cockfight in Mexico, six people were killed and 14 wounded when cartel-on-cartel violence broke out at the spectacle of cruelty. One of the dead was a 16-year-old boy from Washington State, killed in a hail of automatic weapons fire. His father was shot and injured.
You might ask, what are Americans doing at a cockfight in Mexico?
The reality is, Americans are the major suppliers of fighting animals to the cartel-controlled cockfighting pits throughout Mexico. This is an illicit trade every bit as ugly and violent as the drug trade, and these two forms of trafficking are bound together.
U.S.-based cockfighters breed fighting birds by the hundreds of thousands, and the cartels run through the animals in orgies of animal violence at cockfighting pits with stadium seating. They enjoy the bloodletting and the gambling, deadening their hearts even more to the suffering of others.
Prior to that latest mass shooting, there were 20 people killed in a separate massacre at a cockfight, and an American from Chicago was one of the victims.
And shootings occur on our side of the border as well. A referee shot at a cockfight in Miami. A spectator shot at a cockfight in Dallas. A mass shooting at a cockfight outside of Honolulu, with two dead and three wounded.
And the dogfighting is just as violent.
In Mississippi, just two months ago, two men were shot and killed execution style.
We have multiple problems at the southern border, and one of those problems is the trafficking of fighting animals back and forth across it. This trafficking comes with cruelty, chaos, and crime, and it spills over into our communities.
I am shouting from the rooftops to lawmakers about the importance of passing the FIGHT Act. All of this cruelty and mayhem must end! All of this crime must be shut down.
The people conducting these crimes are a menace to our society. It won’t stop unless we get off of the sidelines and get involved.
It's critical that we finish off animal fighting. Will you commit to joining us in this task? [[link removed]]
DONATE NOW [[link removed]]
Because of our pushing them to act, federal and state authorities have made a range of arrests, including of a senior official who worked at the Pentagon and ran an alleged dogfighting operation for more than 20 years ! But these enforcement actions are just scratching the surface of the problem.
Indeed, our Animal Fighting Is the Pits [[link removed]] campaign is designed to eradicate staged fights involving dogs, or roosters with knives strapped to their legs.
We’ve long known that good laws are not enough. We need more enforcement of the law. We have a rewards program that offers cash to tipsters who alert us or law enforcement to these intentional crimes against animals. (Email [email protected] [[email protected]] .)
But there are vast stretches of the United States without any meaningful enforcement and where the animal fighters operate with impunity. To our great dismay, for instance, the federal government has conducted no enforcement actions against animal fighting in Oklahoma, Guam, or Puerto Rico, even though we know where the animal fighters operate. In fact, we recently called out Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt for issuing a video tribute to the cockfighters in The Sooner State.
FIGHT Act Ratchets Up Enforcement
It's spotty enforcement of anti-animal-fighting laws that we’ve identified as a core problem. And that’s also why we are working to strengthen the federal law and to give law enforcement more tools to bring down the dogfighters and cockfighters. That measure is the FIGHT Act—bipartisan legislation in the House and Senate to tackle these problems.
There are a number of provisions in the FIGHT Act, but one of the most important is to create a private right of action against animal fighters. If the measure passes, citizens can sue dogfighters and cockfighters in civil court if law enforcement doesn’t act on credible information about illegal fighting activities.
The FIGHT Act also bans gambling on on-line cockfights, which is a $10-billion-plus enterprise in the Philippines alone. And it allows for the forfeiture of property and other assets used in the commission of an animal-fighting crime. That kind of penalty—losing a house or a truck—will be felt by any animal fighter.
It was a major moment when we passed a law in Congress in 2018 to ban animal fighting everywhere in the United States. But now we are locked onto the task of enforcement and shutting down the pits, the gamecock farms, the pit bull yards, and all of the other features of the organized crimes of dogfighting and cockfighting.
I hope you’ll write your federal lawmakers in support of the FIGHT Act. Contact your federal lawmakers and urge them to oppose the EATS Act, S. 2019 and H.R. 4417. [[link removed]]
WRITE TO YOUR LAWMAKERS [[link removed]]
And I also hope you’ll donate today to support our Animal Fighting Is the Pits campaign. If we cannot stop these forms of despicable and illegal cruelty, how can we address other structural problems such as factory farming, animal testing, the fur trade, and others?
We must finish off animal fighting.
DONATE NOW [[link removed]]
For the animals,
Wayne Pacelle [[link removed]] Wayne Pacelle
President
Center for a Humane Economy
DONATE NOW [[link removed]]
WEBSITE [[link removed]]
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Center for a Humane Economy
PO Box 30845
Bethesda, MD 208243
United States
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