Inconsistencies Plentiful with Poorly  Crafted Animal Abuser Registry 

IF SHE WERE A CAT (above) .... The man who beat her would have to register as an animal abuser. Since she is human, he would not have to register.

Consider how poorly the animal abuser registry bill is drafted.

It reads: "A person required to register is prohibited from, possessing, adopting, owning, purchasing or exercising control over any companion animal for the period such person is required to register."

Ok, so, suppose a woman, who must register as a pet abuser, is married,  and her husband has a pet.

Must he banish his pet (or her), regardless of whether or not he can take care of it properly? 

Does she have to move out?

How would he prevent his wife from exercising control over the dog when he left the house and she was home?  Would he have to lock his wife in her room?

Suppose a man is a registered as an abuser and wants a cat.  What would stop him from adopting any one of a million stray cats?

Do you create a pet police? Do you do random inspections?

Longtime companion animal activist and lawyer Pete Reese rightly called this bill "a publicity stunt."  

Aside from the implausibility of enforcing such a law, and the cost, how about the irony of creating a pet abuser registry and not a murderer's registry?

The drug dealer, the home invader, the burglar, the drunk driver who ran over a kid, the car thief, none of these offenders  have registries.

A man could have murdered his neighbor and moved next door to you.

You might not know it unless he beat his dog.

If a man beat his cat, and disfigured her when he set her tail on fire, he would register.

If a man beat his wife and disfigured her by setting her face on fire, he doesn't register.

So why don't we have a registry for all crimes?

Because ours is a country that believes that once someone has "paid their debt to society," once their sentences have been served, offenders should have an opportunity to reform and begin life anew.  New York already has some of the stiffest laws in the nation against animal abuse. 

To publicize names, addresses and places of employment -- long after people served their time or paid their fines -- is a dangerous precedent.

An exception was made in the cases of sex offenders who are believed to have a particular tendency toward recidivism. There is no proof that an animal abuser has a higher rate of recidivism than criminals who victimize humans.

The bank robber could live it down, even the killer.

Not so with a  pet abuser?  Her punishment follows her wherever she goes for years to come.

As for the abusers of humans, once they served their sentence or paid their fine, they are allowed to live free.