Man, you guys sure love lions, huh? That's the lesson Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer learned after a picture of him posing with the lion he'd paid thousands of dollars to hunt and kill in Africa started making the rounds online.
Dailymail.co.uk
To be fair, if lions could take pictures, they'd probably do this every time they kill one of us.
Almost immediately, outrage swept the Internet. See, this wasn't just any lion, this was Cecil, a lion so popular and beloved that most of Zimbabwe had never even heard of him. Nevertheless, the rest of the world lost their shit. Sure, some of that had to do with the fact that Cecil was living in a wildlife preserve and was apparently lured into leaving its boundaries solely so killing him would be technically legal, but it was mostly just that we were told this lion was famous and that Walter Palmer was a monster for making him a trophy.
The calls to bring the people behind this illegal hunt to justice soon became deafening. In some respects, it worked. The guide Palmer hired to keep him within the lines of the law was charged, as was another guide who was responsible for the killing of a different animal months earlier. What kind of actual punishment they'll face remains to be seen, but still, at least that happened.
As for Walter Palmer, he didn't face any charges. The job of a guide is to make sure hunters stay within the limits of the law; his guide essentially failed him on that front. There's not much the courts can do. However, that doesn't apply to the court of public opinion. In that forum, Palmer has been absolutely shredded. Sure, he eventually returned to his dental practice after months of uproar ...
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Come on, man.
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