Pet Licenses?

I suppose the idea of having to pass a test to own an animal might filter out those people who do compulsive animal buying/hoarding

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsive_hoarding#Animal_hoarding

They need to crack down on pet ownership somehow, but I really don't know what the most effective way would be or how they would police it. Mandatory desexing, or compulsory registration? What would be the penalty?

In animal cruelty cases, I feel an eye for an eye is fair.. But it will never happen.

I really don't feel that animal cruelty is taken seriously enough in the eyes of the law. After all, hasn't treatment of animals been shown to be related to treatment of humans?

Yes. It is likely that someone who has commit acts of animal cruelty in their formative years will commit acts of abuse against humans in their adult life.

For example:

http://www.pet-abuse.com/pages/abuse_connection.php

I think many people don't take animal cruelty seriously either. For example, if someone was to keep a dog and beat it to the point that it could no longer walk, or live for that matter, they are charged and possibly jailed for a certain amount of time. If the same thing was done to a person, they would be jailed for years, sometimes for life. It's not fair in my opinion.

I think that pet shops should stop selling pets because someone can just go in there and take a pet without question. For all the shop owner knows, the could be a pet hoarder or have a bad history with pets that doesn't allow them to get pets from proper breeders and shealters.