Slashdot Mirror
DC Could Ban 'Mature' Video Game Sales to Minors
DeathPooky writes "As a part of an effort to continue a reduction in crime in the nation's former murder capital, DC leaders are trying to pass a law banning the sale of mature video games to minors - along with harsh penalties to enforce the law. According to the article, 'A store that violates the law could lose its business license and face a fine of as much as $10,000.' This law mimics other such bans proposed in Virginia and Maryland. I can already feel the chilling effects from here."
The Internet is a medium of anonymity. There's no easy way to prevent the sale of mature video games to minors without a huge invasion of privacy, another obstacle.
And who is defining what is mature content?
And how is this different, than say, banning the sale of pornography to minors? Why is sex, a pleasant thing, shunned in favour of violence? I'd say it's a measure of a sick society. This is a logical move, though I think it would make more sense to lower the porn buying age.
Be relentless!
for the same reason we don't allow kids to buy pornography, for the same reason we don't allow kids to buy cigarettes, for the same reason we don't allow kids to buy alcohol, we shouldn't allow them to go to stores and buy video games
Yes we really should apply the same rules to a (fun) poison and a carcinogen that we do to porn and videogames.
-Colin
(flame on)
"OH SHIT, THERE'S A HORSE IN THE HOSPITAL!"
This is all a political stunt with no thought behind it.
I can already feel the chilling effects from here.
What chilling effects? That kids won't be able to buy video games that have too much violence in them? I don't see any issue with this. We should be heralding this as good. The worst thing that will happen is that a kid who wants a game is going to have to run it past mom and dad first. If they don't think he should have it, then so be it. That's what parenting is all about. This is a GOOD thing.
Which, also is why there are age limits on other things, for the most part. Parents are supposed to decide what is ok for their kids. If they don't want you to have alcohol, you can't get around them and go get it yourself. I think this is good.
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
How exactly do they check to see the age of someone buying off the Internet? And before someone says something like, "How do you expect a kid to buy it off the Net without a credit card?", there are gift cards that are easy to get.
Here in Australia the office of film and literature does games as well. Unfortunately they can't get it out of their heads that games are played by people other than kids.
We have a rating system of:
C - Children
G - General Exhibition
PG - Parental Guidance
M - Mature Audiences Recommended
MA - Mature Audiences Only (15+ only)
AV - Adult Violence (mainly used for TV)
R - 18+ only
X = 18+, pr0n
Only problem is there is no R rating (or AV or X for that matter) for games. This means games like Manhunt and Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude get banned from Australia! Heck, even GTA3 was banned until they removed the ability to pick up hookers and made it harder to run people over.
You might think this would not affect you elsewhere in the world, but really the makers want to reach a broad audience, so a lot of games will already be toned down in the rest of the world just so they can get it into the more stringent parts of the world.
You don't need a credit card to buy stuff ofg the Internet. There are other non-age related ways. Such as gift cards, Internet based gift certificates, etc.
For example, I believe it was 1999 when PlanetAll gave me an Amazon.com online gift certificate for like $10. No catch either.
And why do people not see that by restricting the sale to minors returns control to the parents, who's job it is to determine which values they want to pass on to their kids anyway? If the parent wants li'l Johny to have GTA3 then they can go buy it for him. But last time I checked children's "rights" where pretty much restricted anyway (with a few exceptions). That's why these things are rated "Adult" or "Mature", because they are NOT appropriate for minors.
"Like fire and fusion, government is a dangerous servant and a terrible master."~RAH
What kind of crime can one enact with a video game, exactly? Are they afraid the kids will sharpen the edges of the install cds and slash throats? Beat their girlfirend with a heavy player's guide? Or are they afraid that the use of the games will train the kids in the pressing buttons in a predefined order skills that are so necessary for the successful terrorist, or, worse, stenographer?
Seriously, though, it can't be the implicit encouragement of the use of violence to solve problems presented in many games. If that were the case, minors would have been banned from watching professional sports long, long ago.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
I don't mean this as a troll (really), but I never understood the fuss over preventing sales of violent video games to minors.
All it does is provide a tool to parents enabling them to throttle the sort of world their child is exposed to. Whether or not you agree that a parent should do this, it's not your decision on the matter. It's the right of that parent to control what their kid has access to.
If a parent wants their kid to have access to that stuff, they just need to be present when the sale happens.
This isn't the government saying what a kid can or can't do, it's only the government helping parents have better control over what their kids can and can't do. It's fundamentally like parental controls on your TV. You want your kid watching the PlayBoy channel, don't lock it. You want your kid playing San Andreas, buy it for him/her.
Enter typical diatribe about "but Billy will just go to Jimmy's house to play it" or "but Susie will just get Janie (/Janie's parents) to buy it for her." Guess what, Billy and Susie aren't allowed over to Jimmy and Janie's house once I (overprotective parent) find out about it.
Another diatribe I hear on this matter is, "It's fantasy, kids are capable of distinguishing between fantasy and reality." First, not all kids are capable of making this distinction. Frankly, not all adults are capable of making this distinction. If my kid can't, I don't want him or her having access to this stuff. Second, even if my kid is capable of making this distinction, it still presents certain things as acceptable, things like beating hookers, shooting random people on the street, or even just stealing cars. Ok, so as a rational adult you can recognize that these are things which are not valid courses of action. You have a fundamental upbringing that tells you as much though.
Every time the subject of morality comes up on Slashdot (typically someone imposing their morality on someone else), people come out of the woodwork declaring that morality is all just relative. It's environmental. There's no absolute goods, no absolute bads. Please understand what the inevitable conclusion from this is: a child's environment shapes what that child's perception of acceptable behavior is.
Video games like San Andreas glorify a lifestyle that's not one I want my kids growing up believing is an acceptable life path. Whether or not you believe it, psychologists (folks with degrees on this stuff) understand that a growing child is impressionable. Things that are presented as acceptable to them are accepted as acceptable or perhaps even appropriate to them.
Maybe some kids would still turn into serial killers when they grow up, even having grown up in a totally sterile environment. Maybe some kids can consume all of the corruption society can throw at them, and still turn into a nun/priest when they grow up. These children are the exception. I, as a parent, have the right to observe my child's reactions to his or her environment, and tailor the environment my child is exposed to in order that he or she grows up to be a productive member of society, and not the kind of kid who smokes / does drugs / carjacks people. This only enables me to do that to a higher degree. I'm not telling you how to raise your child, buy your child all the corruption you can if that's the decision you make, just let me have control over what sort of corruption my kid gets.
In the end, the only people here who lose any freedom are the under-18 crowd whose parents don't want them having access to this sort of content. This isn't like alcohol where it's illegal to give it to a minor even after purchase, it's just illegal to sell it to a minor.
This doesn't block anyone's right to free speech. It just filters people's (lack of a) right to direct their free speech at minors through those minors' parents.
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
sorry, no chilling effect to be seen, there is a rating system for a reason.
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
I'm shocked that a lot of people here seem to think it's okay to sell violent games to children. A lot of games are extremely violent and offensive, and reward indiscriminant violence.
Surely people agree that the same type of ratings should be applied to video games as are applied to videos/films?
In the UK we have the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) http://www.bbfc.co.uk/ . If it decides a film/video/game is only suitable for people over a certain age, then it is illegal for a shop to sell it to a person below that age. Other countries have similar systems. There's also a pan-European organisation, http://www.pegi.info/, although I don't think it's descisions are legally enforcable.
It's the over-litigation problem we've been having in the US lately. People over the last few years basically figure that if there is some sort of problem, we should make a law and that'll fix it. Enforcability never comes into play. It doesn't really have to, because all someone needs to do is find one example of a child buying GTA after this law is passed, and tell the media. Instant media frenzy, with accompanying class-action suits.
I'd love to do a study of the laws passed in the last 10 years and see how well any of them are being enforced. We keep giving parents more and more tools to 'protect' their children and parents want less and less responsibility.
My favorite example is the V-Chip. For a while there, it cost you a lot more money for a TV because it had to have a VChip (they used to add like $15-25 to the cost of your TV). Meanwhile, I have never met a single parent who has ever used it. I still see ads today (which we the taxpayer pay for) talking about the V-Chip. Parents don't care though. They don't want to have to program their TV and block out Sex and the City for them! They want the government to make sure their children never, ever see something bad.
-- I have fans? Wow.
I'll admit. When I play Grand Theft Auto (3, VC, SA, all of them apply), there are a lot of jokes I find a little tasteless at times. But it was the developers decision to put them in there. Sure, I don't like all of the jokes, but somebody does. It was Rockstar's idea to put them in and that's their choice. They felt it improved the GTA experience.
But then I ask myself a question. Who decided that at 18, you're magically mature enough to play these games, anyway? I know 14 year olds who are mature enough to play any violent game, yet I also know 20-something year old immature idiots who shouldn't be trusted with anything more dangerous than a piece of string. The ability to decipher the difference between fantasy and reality is something that can't be checked on a card or with age. But to punish the vast majority because of the pre-existing idiocy of the few is wrong. (It's in my own opinion that anyone who would emulate an act of violence in a video game would just have easily been affected by a movie, magazine, or, hell, the evening news these days)
Besides, it's not like there isn't a million easy ways to get around any such legislation. Like say, an uninformed parent buying the game for you. (And here's a bit of a paradox: A parent who would actually go so far to check what his or her kid is playing is more likely to be a more involved parent and would probably have a better grip on reality anyway. Though that may be a bit too much of a generalization.)
I think they should ban nethack on the first place. Killing random monsters just for grabbing their magic items is certainly a felony and eating them is disgusting as well.
There you are, staring at me again.
How much of an increase in violent crime do you need to see in the UK or Australia before it dawns on you that:
A) Banning guns is a very, very bad idea
Very bad example. Here's why. The murder rate in the United States is still four times higher than it is in either the UK or Australia, despite a higher overall violent crime rate in those countries. In other words, there is more violent crime in the UK and Australia, but less murder. Why do you think this is?
It's because of cases like this. Cases that would be a simple mugging in other countries pretty frequently turn into murders here with easy access to deadly weapons. This woman - and countless others like her every year - simply would not be dead today if these stupid kids (and the stupid adults supposedly supervising them) did not have access to such weapons. Your position is directly supporting the murder of people like Nicole Dufresne.
B) It's impossible
Bullshit. Go to Japan and try to buy a gun. Seriously. If you think gun control doesn't work, then you just don't have a very well-developed world view. It does work and it has been working in various countries for many years. In fact, I just did a quick Google search on gun murder in Japan and quickly came up with some numbers from 1996: 9,390 gun murders in the US vs. 15 in Japan. Japan's murder rate has not increased appreciably since then - they have around 1,300 total per year (about 1/8 the number of gun murders alone in this country) with a population about half that of the United States.
I would say banning guns would have a far greater effect on reducing the murder rate than banning violent video game sales to minors. But that does not mean I am against such a ban. I don't see why it has to be either/or. There is no reason, for example, that a 12 year old kid should be playing a game like Manhunt. No justifiable reason at all. I would argue that there's no reason for anybody to play that game, but if adults want to play it, that's up to them. Kids, though - I mean adults need to step in and say "no". Yes, it's the parents' responsibility, but a lot of people seem to use that fact as some sort of rationale for abdicating societal responsibility. It is not, for example, legal for 12 year olds to commit murder or even to drive a car simply because it's their parents' responsibility to make sure that they don't. There is still a law saying they cannot do it, as there should be.
Handguns should be illegal. M-rated game sales to minors should be illegal. End of story. This is not a question of "my rights online", it's a question of living in a free and safe society that does not endorse the sale of devices whose sole purpose is to kill other human beings or the sale of adult content to children who do not yet have the mental maturity to properly process it.
I realize Slashdot has more than a bit of a libertarian slant, but there is a difference between being a libertarian and being an anarchist. There are plenty of countries in the world that are freer than we are in the United States but nevertheless have successfully implemented these perfectly reasonable regulations regarding public safety.
The trouble with laws like this is that by being enforced arbitrarily, they amount to extortion... and will be used to destroy small retailers.
Here is how it works: Every store makes mistakes. There is no doubt about it. No-one is perfect. At some time, someone is going to screw up and sell a game to a minor.
So given that ALL stores violate the law, this is what happens: Once the law is passed, the politicians need to crack down on someone to show they are tough. They could crack down on the electronics superstore mega-chain, except the mega-chain store has multi-million dollar legal teams ready to do battle in court on a moments notice, and they also probably donate generously to the people in office, and if they were only fined money, they can pay the $10,000 out of their billions of dollars with no problem.
However, the local neighborhood video game store, probably doesn't have a lawyer, and is probably just scraping by (and a $10,000 fine could put them out of buisness, even if they don't lose their licence). They are going to be the victims of the crackdown, and they will be driven out of buisness.
And then, that doesn't even account for political extortion. Mr. McCraken is looking for donations and endorsements for his relection. It would be a shame if some government investigators came into your store and shut you down. Perhaps you could help Mr. McCracken's campaign, and he could make sure that there is not any trouble with investigators... understand?
The law will help huge mega-corporations and crooked polititions... it won't stop kids from getting violent videogames (they will just have a clueless adult buy it for them)... and when all said and done the same "want-to-save-you-from-yourself" rightious liberals who supported the law will be complaining how the "evil corporations" drove the independent stores out of buisness (and ignoring the fact that their beloved government regulation is what did it)... and the rightious "we-must-protect-our-morality" conservatives will be complaining about oppressive government regulation (ignoring the fact that they LOVE government regulation, so long as it involves enforcing their "values" on others).
The District of Columbia has a penchant for making symbolic laws that don't do anything but inconvience law-abiding citizens, and sometimes cause harm.
For no one that lives around here, DC is very small and surrounded by Maryland and Virginia. The subway system extends into both other states. Local laws limiting purchases have a very limited effect.
Look at the handgun regulations. Neither Maryland or Virginia require licenses to purchase or own handguns, and all stores will readily sell to DC residents. All handgun laws have done in DC is to keep law-abiding citzens from owning them, the criminals have easy access.
These laws will do the same thing. Drive a few blocks into Maryland and get them there, or take the metro 2-3 stops south to Pentagon City or Crystal City malls and shop there, too.
Here is what you will NOT find. You will NOT find an example of a place where gun crime was out of control, people were getting killed left and right (like in south Chicago) and then guns were banned and the crime rate went down. Most of Europe, Japan, and other countries have lower murder rates than the US and stricter gun laws. However, correlation does not equal causality. The crime rates were lower even before the tough gun laws due to a more homogenous population and other factors. There are numerous US cities that have tough gun laws that are useless. No Chicago murders are prevented by the outlawing of guns within the city. Even if they were banned throughout the entire country, it's not as if guns can't be made in a metals workshop. Guns aren't the problem, it's the culture. Until American society become more polite somehow, murders will remain common no matter what people like Sarah Brady are able to accomplish.
Look, I work in mental health with children, and I can tell you, its not the kids buying the games, its the parents. You have no idea how many parents buy GTA and the like for their kids. Then the parents ask me questions such as "is this game OK for my kid?" and "does this CD have foul language on it?".
What's wrong with kids these days, whats wrong with the games, the music, society ? the answer is one that no politician will give; its the adults. see, adults vote, so lets not put responsibility where it belongs, lets blame "schools", "games", T.V.", "terrorism", "music", but Oh lord, lets not blame the voters.
Problems with your kid? Hmm...do you: know the name of your kid's teacher? speak to this teacher every 9 weeks or so (at least), do you check your kids homework nightly? do you speak to your kids about drugs and safe sex? do you preview the music you buy for you child? Same with games? do you make an effort to meet your teen's friends or talk you their friends parents? do you ask you kid how their day was and how they are doing? are you your childs friend? (you shouldn't be, they have friends at school, they need YOU as their parent).
We need fewer laws in our society and more parents to step up to the plate!
I caused millions of virtual deaths, jumped on countless enemy's heads, and manouvered countless falling blocks into lines before the age of 15. I, like many other rational people, refuse to believe that it was mere luck that I didn't become a mass murderer, jump on anyone's head, or spend my life dropping blocks so that they form straight lines...it was because I knew that that was what I did in games, and those rules did not apply to real life. If someone can't make this distinction, they have a serious mental illness. It's a basic component of not being crazy. You will never, ever see a child react to a death in a game as seriously as they do in real life; you will never see your kid running around eating dots and looking out for ghosts. Your tendency to want to be able to blame games for your potential future failures is not at all substantiated or rational.
Freedom of expression comes at a very, very high price in this country. The facilitation of your SUBJECTIVE BELIEFS is not worth losing a form of unregulated speech. If your child can get to and from a mall by him/herself, install a game, play it, and plot a spate of copycat crimes all without your noticing, then the problem here is not that the world hasn't been steamrolled into a moral whiteroom, shaped to perfectly fit your subjective beliefs. It's nice that you have certain principles about how your child ought to be raised, but honestly I think I speak for a great number of people when I say I would prefer it if you stopped trying to parent my children as well.
That's not the issue. You are promoting government regulation of speech. You have control over what sort of corruption your kid has. Ask what he's doing. Be involved, be aware. If you can't control what kind of video games your child plays without the government's help, then your kids are pretty much screwed. Stop trying to throw away MY freedom of expression in exchange for an opportunity to be less responsible for raising your own children.
But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most... and that is the indifference of good men.
...from simply buying their kids the games.
Unfortunately for all these watchdog groups, every parent gets to decide when and how much to warp their kids' little minds.
My kid turned eleven last year. She's been playing Bugs Bunny, Harry Potter and kid-specific crap for four years. She wanted something more challenging and maybe just a bit more grown up. We pulled Resident Evil and Oddworld from our old collection and they seem to suit her just fine.
I'm sure some parents would object but they don't get to decide what's best for my kid. Likewise, I may not approve of Cletus buying Grand Theft Auto for his five year old, but it's his business not mine. Until his kid kills my kid with his car imitating the game.
Then I kill Cletus for not monitoring his kid and and I go to jail and later it gets turned into a "Law and Order" episode which me and my new lesbian lover watch together.
Let the circle be unbroken...
Oh man.. there's got to be some sick f*ck out there who :
:
Wishes they were a murderer.
Wishes they had a gun.
Wishes they had a printer so they could print your post out.
Wishes they could afford to take a trip to wherever you're at right now.
Know why ?
So they could shoot 'your silly ass from' the street through the window and through your head whilst you watch some show on T.V. And then They'd stick the print-out of your comment to your chest, just for a hint of irony.
Yeah, you go and have a gun and know how to defend yourself - it's still not going to stop a bullet.
Now let's see them try that with
- a knife ( throw it, doesn't go through glass well. Stab ? They'll have to get close enough )
- a baseball bat ( ditto )
- my fists ( glass would probably cut them and they'd bleed to death *smirk*, ditto on the other )
You see - your entire point of view rests on the idea that you can shoot the other person before they can shoot you. I don't know the odds; I certainly don't know how much of a marksman you are, or how good your reflexes are. But I do know you first need to know you -are- going to be shot at, and detecting that, in and of itself, is the toughie.
Sure, you could just pull your gun and blast somebody's brains out (though if you're a good marksman, you'll aim for their leg, right? no need to outright kill if you can just immobilize) as soon as you feel remotely threatened. And in the U.S. you can probably get away with it. In most other countries you'll probably have used excessive force.
And that still leaves the gunman that you can't even see.
Put differently... given the choice of somebody having a gun, a knife, a bat, or only their fists - which would you rather have them wielding in a situation where they intend to kill you ?
Also, I'd like to see you corroborate the statement that guns more often prevent death than cause it, in the U.S.
That is to say.. some statistic where it shows that if a gun wasn't used to deter a particular crime, somebody WOULD have been killed.
Not 'may have been' or 'remotely, possibly, I dunno, I suppose it's possible'.
Otherwise we'd only have to go by the word of many people who, if for no other reason than legal and court reasons, claim "I believe he was going to kill me/him/her/them.", even if this can't be proven in any way.
I'm against guns outside of specialist forces. Sure, I know criminals will be able to get their guns illegally. I just take my chances with that.
I'm also not naive to think that there's any way the U.S. situation can be reversed within a reasonable amount of time. Certainly not with ever-heavier gun classifications having their prohibitions lifted (such as assault rifles. ever wonder why they're not called defense rifles? hmm)
So I'm pretty neutral as far as the U.S. situation goes, as long as the U.S. situation doesn't spread to other countries at the hand of the likes of the NRA.
I have taken psychology classes, what you need to take is a class in logic. There is certainly a corelation between sex, dominance and violence against women, but corelation does not mean causation. Furthermore that isn't specific to an early sexual awakening. There's a correlation between dominance and any type of violence, be it against women or whoever.
The darkness... controls the music. The music... controls the soul.
I'm confused. Your argument is that if you go to someplace where you don't have connections, and where firearms are illegal, you won't be able to readily get your hands on a gun, and that makes anti-gun laws effective? This is a specious argument at best, and probably simply an unthought one. Or, of course, a troll. That actually seems very likely because usually only the most fervent idiots believe something like "devices whose sole purpose is to kill other human beings". More common is the arrogant belief that children necessarily "do not yet have the mental maturity to properly process" [adult material]. It depends on the children and the material, and no two situations are alike, no matter how dearly you want that to be true so you can apply a simple, narrow world view to all situations.
The fact is that I can go to Japan and rent an industrial space, put a lathe and a vertical mill in it, buy some steel, and make my own handguns. Making firearms is not really all that difficult, unless you're talking about high-powered, long-range, accurate rifles. Consider the fact that the Colt 1911 was first produced in 1911, and that you have better tools and materials available today, and you may understand what I'm trying to tell you.
The simple fact is that the more difficult you make it for criminals to get guns, the more those guns will be worth, and the more likely they are to be in the hands only of the most resourceful and/or successful criminals. You cannot eliminate guns! Think about the grease gun, which was an automatic weapon basically made out of a bunch of pipe parts. You simply can't do it. And, barring that, black powder weapons are VERY easy to make, fairly accurate, typically very high caliber so they have a whole lot of stopping power, and you don't even need cartridges, just bullets, powder, and paper. If you think you can't kill someone handily with the Morgan .50 caliber black powder revolver (the first all-steel revolver) you've got another think coming. You barely need machining technology to make those suckers.
Anyway, back to the issue of mature-rated video games. I am entirely behind not allowing kids to purchase the games. Movie theaters already don't let them in. In my opinion, games should be rated according to entirely objective criteria and their distribution to minors should be controlled. Parents should be involved in the lives of their offspring at least until the point where they are no longer responsible for them. We should provide them with the assistance that they need to be able to do their job, within reason. We wouldn't want to stop kids from being able to purchase sports games because their parents were opposed to football or anything, that's too much - but keeping the sex and violence from them in such a way that their parents can present it to them in a guided way is pretty reasonable. Your belief that themes like sex and violence have no place in the lives of those under the age of 18 is, however, excessively socially retarded - which is exactly what those kids are going to be when they are introduced to them cold and with no parental supervision (to explain the ramifications of such things) at the age of eighteen.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Yes, it's the parents' responsibility, but a lot of people seem to use that fact as some sort of rationale for abdicating societal responsibility.
It's not abdicating societal responsibility; it's placing that responsibility in the right place. Society can punish the child's parents for their failures, and laws to protect children directly are an attempt to remove that responsibility from society. It's our job to hold parents accountable, and when necessary, to step in in their place.
It is not, for example, legal for 12 year olds to commit murder or even to drive a car simply because it's their parents' responsibility to make sure that they don't.
Murder is a act that reduces the freedom of others, and hence there is a legitimate need to restrict it. How does buying a video game reduce the freedom of others? This whole idea is an issue for civil court -- show that video games lead to murder and sue the fsck out of whoever made the game. If anyone could actually show that sort of relation this would have happened years ago and no one would make such games because it would be too expensive.
Finally, if the purpose of the game ban is to stop murder, couldn't I argue that the purpose of the murder ban is to stop murder, and we don't need another? Why do we need two laws to do the same thing; maybe we need to change or replace the first law, but we certainly don't need another if the first one isn't working.
When something like this comes up, I rarely hear the most important point. It's as if we already agreed that violent games are bad and are only haggling with the government about how much of our rights they should take away.
There is no evidence whatsoever that videogames lead to crime. The only "evidence" we have is 3 well-publicised cases - Doom caused Columbine, GTA caused two kids shoot trucks with a rifle and Manhunt caused one guy to kill a friend. Needless to say, all three stories are more or less bogus (95%, 90% and 100% bogus, to be precise).
I would be very understanding if DC leaders would show us a study demonstrating that 35% of minors playing video games commit crimes as opposed to 5% of minors who do not play video games. As long as there is no such study, the DC leaders are "mistaken" to limit the sale of video games.
I would even dare suggest that minors who play video games may be less likely to commit crimes (the correlation may be negative). The "criminal" kids probably have less money to spend on games, consoles, computers and Internet.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
I'm 20. There were never any limits on what games I could play as a kid, and guess how I turned out-I'm on the Dean's List at college with a 3.5 average. These kinds of laws are not needed. What's needed is for parents (not government) to make sure their kids don't cross the line, like mine did.
I'm glad I'm getting older. Two parents kept me in line. If the government acted as a third, I'd probably be neurotic
"Do I dare disturb the universe?"
If someone where motivated enough to make preparations and fly to another city, they don't need a gun to kill. You can make explosives cheaply and in your bathtub. Assassinations are *extremely rare* in the United States... and most other places, for that matter.
You have to understand, the average person does not want to hurt you. Your post makes it sound like you don't know that. The result of this fear should not be to attempt to disempower others, however.
A man motivated enough to kill a person while the other person has no knowledge does not need a gun. He barely even needs imagination or money.
A burglar who is pondering breaking into a house needs to consider of the owner has a gun. If everyone did, he would need to consider another line of work. Assume our burglar lives in a world where gun control worked, and so neither he nor his victims has weapons. Now assume the opposite, where everyone does. Which burglar would you rather be?
The defensive use of guns is not at all rare, ineffective, or results in people being shot with their own guns, despite the FUD to the contrary.
"Put differently... given the choice of somebody having a gun, a knife, a bat, or only their fists - which would you rather have them wielding in a situation where they intend to kill you ?"
I would rather we both have guns. Most of the people who would be looking to kill me are hella stronger than me. In your world, I am extinct. So are you, probably, unless you spend hours a week on martial arts. Your malefactor undoubtably will, or just generally be a stronger human than you.
The fact that guns are so final an answer means that society is a lot better at enforcing its collective will. If I want to shoot a man in a world where guns are common, there is a *much higher* chance of me being shot in return, preemptively, or concurrently. This changes my odds dramatically- now I have to be willing to throw my life away. Statistically, such people either suppress their murderous desire or are dealt with by society.