Amazon.Com sells dog fighting and cock fighting videos

[mikebeltx]

This isn't internet rumour or urban legend: Amazon.Com sells books and videos about dog fighting and cock fighting. Go here to send a letter to Amazon CEO Jeffrey Bezos, telling him that you won't do business with them until they cease this abominable practice.

Here are some prime examples; this crap is an abomination to God and man:

Gamecock

Comments

[veracosa]

I am an avid animal lover, and a veterinary professional.
But many of these videos and books have to be viewed in a certain light.

The breeding and management of fighting cocks book was originally published in the late 1700's, and if you read the pages it's all "ye olde English." Your typical fighting cock owner today isn't gonna be able to wade though that book.
The "Dog Pit" book is from 1888, and is a reprint. I wish I had images from the inside; the cover is amazing.
The videos "Bloodline" and "off the chain" are documentaries that look at the APBT overall including, of course, illegal dogfighting.
The "fighting dog breeds" book is a look at the bloodlines and ancestry of dog breeds that were originally designed for fighting; it is not necc. advocating dog fighting.
The "Gamecock" magazine is obviously meant for maintaining and keeping record of fighting birds, and I don't agree with it's sale.

Of course all this material could be "used" for bad, but guess what, so could The Anarchist's Cookbook, and most people these days don't bitch about that old rag anymore.

It's the old debate about documenting history and censoring. If no-one carried these books, then some of history is lost. And while yes, I think that we are of course better off today without legal animal fighting, we can't maintain our perspective if we erase the past.

I don't mean to stir up a big ole pot of nasty, after all I see Pit Bulls get the short end of the stick every day in my line of work. But I want people to also investigate things. *shrug*

...

[professorbooty]

I'm glad I read this before commenting, because I was about to say almost exactly what you said.

I don't want them to stop carrying these materials -- even if they provide some minority with information that furthers their abuse of animals.  I sincerely doubt that anyone who is thinking of raising animals to fight each other is going to be pushed over the line by their purchase.  If that's why they're buying it, they were already over the line of commitment.

Even the Gamecock magazine is a questionable issue for me.  Cockfighting is illegal throughtout nearly all of the United States, and rightly so, in my opinion, but still...  While I don't smoke pot myself, I don't agree that it should be illegal, and I don't want those who do support its prohibition to successfully force Amazon to stop carrying High Times magazine.  There's a temptation to compare the sale of a magazine like Gamecock to that of other things we* find reprehensible such as child pornography, but there's an essential difference in that child pornography is itself illegal, rather than just being a depiction of illegal acts.

It's a tough thing in a case like this, being an advocate of both animal rights and free speech.

*I'm making an assumption with my inclusive language here, but I'm fairly confident of this one.