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'Games as Porn' Bill Passes Utah House
The state bill which attempts to equate gaming with pornography has passed the vote in the Utah house of representatives. GameDailyBiz reports: "Even though there's still no evidence of a direct link between video game violence and acts of violence committed in real-life, Hogue suggested that playing violent games leads to 'automatic learning of aggressive behavior,' and that violent games have played a role in school shootings. 'Would these same kids have done this anyway without watching violent videos? Maybe not,' he said, referring to the Columbine massacre."
Someone should have gotten up and made a rebuttal of "Or maybe yes." and then there'd be a deadlock as the opposing side tries to come up with an actual argument.
You can mod your friends, you can mod your nose, but you can't mod your friend's nose.
Would these same kids have done this anyway without being made to go to school? Maybe not.
if i'm not immortal, what's the point of living?
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Like this is a surprise, it's Utah which according to wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah
Tell me no one saw this coming.
Oops, how did this get here?
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The dreaded "gamer." Three kids go on a shooting spree and so the 1,000,000+ who play are all lining up at gun stores.
This is a law brought to you by the people who want intelligent design taught in school.
It also an example of why people are disgusted with legislators around the country.
Not to start a big flame war or anything, but doesn't invading other countries kind of encourage aggressive behavior?
It seems that it isn't a question of aggressive behavior per se, it is where the aggresive behavior comes from that matters. In other words it is bullshit.
I think this is a bold and positive step. Unfortunately, I believe that they have left a loop hole that needs to be immediately covered. Namely, while we can protect our children from violent video games, there are still now laws in place to protect our children from violent books. There are literally thousands of mystery books out there teaching our children how to be perfect killers. There are thousands of books glorifying war, death conflict, and even sexual perversion. I think must act immediately to step up an American Censorship board to keep violent books out of the hands of our children. I believe that all books containing 'adult content' should be separated out from books safe for children. Further, schools should have an absolute ban on violent and mature books.
If we don't act now, school shootings will continue to rise, the violent murders will continue to increase, and our children will continue to live shorter and shorter lives in this terrible and violent world.
2. If you are in Utah, don't worry. I'm in Utah now, and guess one of the two will happen:
a. It won't pass the Senate, as legislative sessions here are remarkably short anyways (just a bill to get a little attention). It will simply die with time.
b. If it does pass the Senate, my money is on a "pocket" veto, pretty much just ignoring the bill. The Utah senate this year is farily tied up as it is.
In any case, here's the text for the bill and the ammendment for those interested. It'd be nice if the submitters included this information when they sent in an article on pending legislation.
I am not going to say "video game = go on killing spree". However, what I am going to say is that when I went to high school in early to late 80's the idea of gun violence did not cross our mind. I do realize that not all high schools are equal and that some gun violence did exist.
However, what disturbs me about many youth is that they do not think twice about getting a hand gun. I grew up in the country or cottage country to be exact and guns were common things. Though guns were used to go hunting for bear, deer or moose. I can't remember anybody in my circle in friends saying, "Hey look at this hand gun". It was more like, "Hey did you see the bear I shot!"
What I want to say is that I think we should consider the message we are saying with shooter and violent games. I am not so sure it is totally innocent!
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
That's super convenient. Now I only have one hobby!
-- Kate
Call this a knee-jerk reaction stemming from childhood wounds, but I beleive many school shootings don't happen becasue of violent video games. These kids were screwed up for other reasons. I blame bad parenting, either being abusive and / or negligent to their child. Next I blame the school administrations. I have been to seven different schools, and 5 of them all did the same thing. Say student A and his buddies start irritating student B. Administration tells studen B to ignore it. Student B will only ignore it so long before reacting. 99 times out of a 100, student B will get in trouble for reacting, but student A will get off with nothing. This pisses of Student B. Eventually studen B gets more and more pissed. Mabey we should see what's going on inside the schools?
Maybe this'll spur them to get around to cleaning up that little polygamy "problem" over there. May I present exhibit a: Google Results 1 - 100 of about 94,300 for mormon wife underaged
Rep. Lorie Fowlke (R-Orem) pointed out that HB 257 is the most narrowly defined legislation of these kinds of violent games bills. "I think it is worth a try," she said. "Otherwise we give up and say the court will always determine our values."
And, Dastardly said, "It is worth a try to keep these bills from being passed otherwise we give up and say the politicians will always determine our values."
Would these same kids have done this anyway without being picked on daily at school? Maybe not.
"It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
The "gaming generation" will be in power in about ten to twenty years and we can undo the damage done by these ignorant good old boys. Unfortunately, until then we're forced to suffer.
Of course, repealing the 2nd ammendment and banning firearms would be death at the polls
Aye, because firearms bans are working so well elsewhere.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
But it does seem hypocrical to ban the games which might have precipitated the shooting and to allow semi-automatic weapons that definately assisted in the shooting. How can you ban games that let people shoot in fantasy but not the weapons that let people shoot in reality?
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"Would these same kids have done this anyway without watching violent videos? Maybe not,' he said, referring to the Columbine massacre." What a moron. Would they have done this if guns were illegal and therefore much harder to get? Probably not!
Give us this day our garlic bread and lead us not into vegetarianism but deliver us some pizza.
http://www.snopes.com/music/songs/mondays.asp
There were school shootings long before video games started to take off, and long before the advent of the kind of graphic ultraviolence that this bill targets....
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
Goddamn Mario. It's not my fault. Blame my parents.
Also whenever I'm in a big box store I get the urge to run through the aisles, eating fruit off the floor and dodging obese people in brightly colored mumus
If games are what causes violence, then porn must surely be what causes people to have sex?
If this is true, then only people watching porn can reproduce. Hence if porn is banned, there
will be no sex and no next generation anymore.
The other way round, in order to ensure reproduction in the developed countries, free,
high-quality porn should be available to everybody. Since games = porn, the same should
be true for games.... I think I like this law!
I also have a nagging suspicion: Do all these overpopulated 3rd world countries have better
and more porn than we do?
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.