Violent videogames are one of the favorite bugaboos of conservative Republicans and a few censor-happy Democrats like Joe Lieberman. Lawmakers in Michigan have begun to move on a bill that would provide criminal penalties for anyone who sells M-rated games to minors.
State Senator Hansen Clarke (D-Detroit) recently sponsored the bill, which has recieved the backing of Governor Jennifer Granholm (D). This Detroit Free Press article has more details.
More after the break...
A couple key grafs (emphasis mine).
Michigan will soon become the latest state to consider banning the sale of violent video games to minors. And even though there's a history of such laws being struck down by courts in other states, the measure's sponsor is optimistic about its chances.
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"I'd like to ban them outright," he said. "I don't think we could get that through right now. I think they desensitize kids to violence. I think they train our kids to be killers."
He's not just looking for parental consent, or carding - he wants to ban them completely. The only reason he does it is because he doesn't think such a bill would pass. He isn't at all troubled by the fact that such a ban would be completely unconstitutional.
Pro-censorship groups have funded numerous studies over the years, but have consistently failed to show a correlation between playing video games and violence in minors. In fact, some studes have actually shown just the opposite.
Another problem in drafting these laws is that the legal standard for restricting freedom of expression is causation -- that is, the material clearly has to cause the violence. That's a much higher standard than correlation, which is the most any study has proven about video games today.
They haven't proven even that much, but no matter. The law won't stand the test of the courts, if it ever comes to that.
Here's the letter to the editor I sent today:
State Senator Hansen Clarke's short-sighted bill to ban the sale of video games to minors serves baselessly villifies gamers without addressing any of the more difficult, underlying problems.
His fallacious rationale invokes incidents of violent behavior allegedly linked to video games. The same reasoning could be used to ban the Bible. The Old Testament, in particular, contains depictions and endorsements of killing, slavery, rape, incest and genocide. It's inspired notorious killers such as Jim Jones, David Koresh and John Wayne Gacy.
In spite of numerous studies attempting to link video games to violent behavior, few have shown even a weak correlation. On the contrary, a 2001 study by the British government found that gamers, on average, were more well adjusted than their non-gaming peers.
While I wouldn't suggest that young minors should be playing violent games such as "Grand Theft Auto", is it really appropriate to create a nanny state as an excuse for parents to pay even less attention to what their children are doing?
I know somebody will probably get on me for using conservative language like "nanny state", but this kind of law is bad policy no matter which party it comes from. Government ought to actively encourage responsible parenting, and this bill does just the opposite.
Why is it bad policy? It's useless. It won't do anything. Most game shops already card customers for M-rated games, and parents buy most of their kids' video games anyway. Furthermore, no Democrat should be pro-censorship. Period.
Why is it bad politics? It reinforces the Republican frame that our "moral values" are "under attack" by "evul popular culture". It also alienates and villifies an intelligent, well-educated segment of of of Democrats most important demographic, 18-35 year olds (the average gamer is 29 years old).
BTW: This link used to go to a Sunday Times article discussing a study that showed gamers to be, on average, better adjusted than their non-gaming peers. It doesn't appear to be online anymore, but does anyone happen to know of an archived copy?