It is extremely easy to acquire fighting dogs. Street fighters can buy fighting dogs for a few hundred dollars or, more commonly, they breed their own or steal them. The professional fighters often have large sums of disposable cash and easily spend a few thousand dollars for proven champions. The dogs are extremely difficult for law enforcement to trace because they are never licensed and they disappear frequently. The average life span of the fighting dog is very, very short. For most fighters, the dogs are considered disposable a fact that is painfully obvious when the fights are over and everyone has left the crime scene. Inevitably, the mutilated carcasses of the losers of the evening’s match will be left behind. In the world of urban dogfighting, where an individual’s fighting dog is an extension of his or her own identity, defeat in a fight is unacceptable. A dog that loses a fight also loses a lot of money and compromises the reputation of his owner. The end result, if the losing dog survives the fight, is immediate death, if he is lucky, or torture and mutilation if the owner is embarrassed or irate. For many, this ritual is a way to regain the respect of their peers. There is no reverence for life or concern for the animals. The abuses that the dogs endure - both in and out of the ring - is so gruesome that even seasoned investigators are consistently shocked by the barbarities they discover at raids. In commenting on a recent raid in South Carolina (2004), First Circuit assistant solicitor, Richard Lackey said, “It’s a gruesome scene...I’ve never seen anything like this before.” Newton County Sheriff, Joe Nichols described a 2004 raid in Georgia as, “one of the most horrible things I have experienced.”

The systematic desensitization of each new generation in high crime inner cities starts early on; there, most children are routinely exposed to dogfighting and are forced to accept the inherent violence as normal. The routine exposure of the children to unfettered animal abuse and neglect is a major contributing factor in their later manifestation of social deviance. “In many neighborhoods where gangs are strong, you now have 8-, 9-, 10-year-olds conducting their own dogfights. Or being spectators at the fights people are holding," said Sgt. Steve Brownstein of Chicago’s Animal Abuse Control Team. Indeed, for gangs, dog-fighting is a valuable tool to initiate young members into a culture of violence: “You want to find the perfect way to desensitize a kid so he’ll kill that anonymous gangbanger from three blocks over? Give him a puppy and let him raise it. Then let him kill it. I guarantee that will desensitize that kid.”This early exposure to and participation in dog-fighting is of concern to law enforcement, not only as a child endangerment issue, but also because children that become desensitized to violence become criminalized and perpetuate that cycle of violence.

Dogfighting is tremendously widespread and has reached epidemic levels in America’s urban communities. We have over two centuries of well documented research addressing the devastating impact of social, economic and racial injustice in these communities. America’s finest legal minds, political activists and social advocates have painstakingly dissected the culture of poverty in an attempt to understand the disproportionately high rates of crime, drug use, and social deviance in inner-city communities. We have identified several hundred factors that contribute to these social ills, and understand intrinsically that no single contributing factor exists in a vacuum; all are interrelated and all must be addressed. Shockingly, one of the most obvious and avoidable contributing factors has been largely ignored - animal legal injustice. Although dogfighting is outlawed in all fifty stated and is a serious felony in most jurisdictions, it has been largely ignored by law enforcement in the urban communities where it is most pervasive. When we, as a society, fail to hold perpetrators criminally liable for violating dogfighting and other animal cruelty statutes, we not only condon their behavior, but send a message that our legal system is weak and inconsistent. The plight of the animals in inner-city areas is so blatantly obvious; even those who are not themselves immediately involved with dogfighting are routinely exposed to the abuse and neglect of the animals. The legislators clearly understand the extreme violence inherent in the blood sport, and the corresponding drug use, gambling, and violence against humans. They have enacted comprehensive laws and very stiff penalties to deter and punish those engaged in dogfighting, yet in urban communities where those laws are shockingly under-enforced, the legal system has made a mockery of the laws

It is extremely difficult for anyone besides dogmen to justify dogfighting. Law enforcement officials that penetrate the clandestine subculture are routinely sickened by the macabre blood sport. American culture has criminalized dogfighting and stigmatizes those deviant enough to engage in it. Our collective American consciousness is repulsed by dog-fighting with much the same disdain that we feel for child molesters. One study, published in Society and Animals, attempted offer a rare glimpse into the psyche of the prototypical dogman and to rationalize the behavior that to the rest of us is incontrovertibly perverse. According to the study, there are five major techniques that dogmen employ to justify dogfighting: (1) denial of the victim; (2) denial of responsibility; (3) denial of injury; (4) appeal to higher loyalties; and (5) condemnation of the condemners.

(1) Denial of the Victim: Most dogmen adamantly deny that the dogs are victimized by the culture of dogfighting. The dogs are glorified as fighting machines with insatiable blood-lust. High profile boxer-turned-convict, Will Grigsby, maintained that the dogs he fought were no more victims than the athletes in his profession. “To me, it's just like boxing. It's cruel if you put a pit bull on a poodle, or a pit bull on another pit bull that don't want to fight. But if you have two dogs that weigh the same amount in an organized dog fight, well, that's just like boxing." There is a perception that in the fighting circuit, the dogs get whatever they deserve. If a dog shows ‘gameness’ and wins several matches, he earns titles such as ‘Champion’ or ‘Grand Champion’ and the respect of the ‘fanciers.’ If a dog quits or loses, he is considered a ‘cur.' There is no place for ‘curs’ in dogfighting, they are a humiliation to the trainers, handlers, and to those that bet on them.    

(2) Denial of Responsibility: In an interview, one archetypal 'dogman' found moral vindication through denial, “We’re not hurting anybody and the dog’s love to fight, so what’s the harm? If you could see the way the animals love it…you wouldn’t think it was cruel.”  Fighting is portrayed as something that comes naturally to the dogs - that they’re born with an undeniable propensity to kill. “This dog GAR, when he was nine months old, I let him kill a female that had no place on this yard…He was a pup born by himself and had to be taken away from his mother at near five weeks. He was a fight crazy dog from just a puppy…He was a wild eyed dog that showed the eye of the Beast to all that he looked at.”

(3) Denial of Injury: Many fighters claim that the dogs are treated well, both before and after the fights, and what happens in the pit - well, “they enjoy fighting.” Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, some dogmen insist that “[i]t's not the blood and gore that people have been led to believe.” Many proponents of dogfighting claim that the bloodsport is no more violent than boxing.

 (4) Appeal to a Higher Authority: The culture of dogfighting perpetuates itself by glorifying its own history and aggrandizing those who are heavily involved. “Old timers” are lauded as warriors, heroes, and role models. “The old timers know all the champions and the great bloodlines. They have produced most of the champion dogs. If they don't like you, you are not going anywhere in dogfighting. You have got to show them the respect they deserve.” Dogfighting literature, publications, and websites are replete with dogmen fondly recalling their early experiences of becoming indoctrinated into the “fraternity” by men that they idolized. “In dogfighting you start at the bottom and...work your way up to be an old timer. If they accept you, an old timer will take you on like an apprentice. An old timer...got me started....He saw dogfighting was important to me, and brought me into this insider circle. I would not have made it without him.”Many fighters maintain that dogfighting is a rich tradition with cultural and historical significance that is proudly passed from generation to generation. “When I reach the other world and stand in front of my father once again, we will surely discuss my accomplishments of this world. I would consider it the greatest honor if my father would feel that I had became a conditioner capable of competing with Mayfield. My battle quote for this issue goes out to all dog men or competitors of any kind. It is from our late President Theodore Roosevelt and says, ‘Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat’.”  

(5) Condemnation of the Condemners: Dogfighters often see themselves as a misunderstood group, victims of cultural genocide. “Dogfighting is a part of this culture. You don't change culture. It dies but it does not change. Dogfighting, cockfighting, fishing, hunting are all parts of our heritage. We have seen many intruders try to change us, it's always outsiders...but we are just ordinary folk who are different in some ways.” Dogfighting literature is often replete with juxtapositions of the bloodsport, religion, and patriotism: “God protect us against those enemies, foreign and DOMESTIC who would steal our Constitutional rights and our liberty! FREEDOM!” Some dogmen even go so far as to maintain that they’re “truth seekers,” ordained by God to control all living beings and to preserve the “game” of dogfighting. Dogfighters perceive their behavior as normal and often try to portray humane organizations and other anti-dogfighting groups as extremists and as true animal abusers. One website, Gamedogs.com, has an entire section devoted to news of “abuses” committed by humane workers, or “humaniacs” as the dogmen (dog mean)often refer to them.