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Originally Posted by larryn
I don't disagree with any of this, and you are necessairly disagreeing with what I said either. We do not know the facts of this case. Period. He may be guilty or it may just as easily be explainable.
I normally wouldn't even respond to a thread like this, because they are just filled with eVillagers with ePitchforks. Fruitless pursuits by the unwitting.
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It depends on how you define "guilty". He has already admitted to killing the lion, so in the minds of a lot people, he's already "guilty" of that. He has worked hard to shift attention onto the idea that his guides were the ones who committed a legal transgression (ie: targeting the "wrong" lion inside a protected area). He seems epically oblivious to the fact that a lot of people are not hung up on that. For them, the bigger offense is not a legal one.
Many accept hunting for food to feed your family, but are deeply unsupportive of hunting endangered species for no purpose other than to derive pleasure from watching them die. Topping it off by skinning and beheading the animal makes it all the more abhorrent to them. Whether that "hobby" is practiced inside or outside an arbitrarily designated protected area does not make that action any more or less repulsive to them. He doesnt seem to get that at all.
Sure, if he broke no laws himself, he will not be charged. Social media cannot impose legally binding criminal fines. He will not be placed on probation, nor have his license to practice dentistry revoked, nor be sent to jail, based on Ricky Gervais' twitter posts or the "ePitchfork" brigade.
If his patients all leave, that would certainly impact his business far more than a criminal fine would. But, it's their dental fees which fund such trips to Africa in the first place, and some may not choose to continue to enable that (perfectly legal) hobby.
If social media provides the transparency to allow his patients to make a more informed choice about what behaviors they are supporting, that's not a bad thing. Unlike what happened to Cecil, that would be natural selection in it's purest form.