Appropriate punishment for animal cruelty

Originally Posted by skippy3481

...Your willing to codemn them for one act of complete stupidity to a life of eternal damnation....

This is the thing that stood out to me the most. Why is it that people are so unwilling to see malice for what it is? I don't understand the phenomenon of wanting to put euphemisms on the cruel things humans do. "Stupidity" means that something was done accidentally or without understanding that the action would produce pain within another living being. But here you have several horses being shot dozens of times, which certainly indicates intent instead of an accident, and you also have one of the boys saying that he had been injured by a horse in the past and wanted to shoot the horses, which certainly indicates that he KNEW full well his actions would cause harm and pain to the horses.

On top of that, I think the movement towards infantilizing anyone under the age of 18 is foolish. Yes, someone who's 16 may not have the same mind of a 25 year old, but they're not going to automatically learn to behave when they celebrate their 18th birthday if society continually sends the message that "oh you're just a kid, so obviously you didn't mean to do anything wrong." You have to teach and enforce the right behavior as early as possible. You can tell a kid about the difference between right and wrong, but unless you punish the bad behavior and reward the good behavior, they'll never have any incentive to actually practice the desired behavior. It seems to me our society is making it harder and harder for kids to become mature, functional adults by saying nothing's ever their fault and allowing them to get away with irresponsible, cruel actions.