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CT State Senator Wants To Ban Kids From Using Arcade Guns
New submitter Nyder writes "In a move that is sure to bring tears to the eyes of kids everywhere, Connecticut State Senator Toni Harp proposed a bill in January that would ban anyone younger than 18 from playing 'violent point-and-shoot' video games in arcades or other public establishments. 'The bill also called for research into the effects of violent video games on young minds, through a committee called the Violent Video Game Task Force within the Department of Children and Families. The task force would advise the Governor and General assembly on state programs that "may reduce the effects of violent video games on youth behavior," suggesting before the research was done that violent video games have an effect on children's actions.' Hopefully this won't pass; I guess the video game lobby hasn't paid this Senator enough 'funds' for her campaign."
But they can still play cowboys and indians, running around with toy guns pointed at each other, pulling the trigger and saying "bang, you're dead!", right?
The birds are chirping, and clueless politicians race to implement laws protecting children from video games and other "immoral" behavior.
They want to ban firearms for purely cosmetic features that make no difference between it and other models, why not? Who said laws have to make sense, they clearly don't with nutter Diane Feinsteins gun bill.
Communists, "gun violence", video games, SARS, terrorists, jesus fucking christ. I can't believe people are actually stupid enough to fall into line for the scare of the day anymore.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
wait, people still play in arcades?
...invisible or something?
How on earth can a country be so contradictory?
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Maybe 17-year olds could be allowed to play with parental consent. After all, they are allowed to join the army and use real guns to kill real people.
I wish to hell people would elect sane and responsible government representatives. But getting people to do that would be like getting a goat to drive a car.
Fata viam invenient.
That will keep them from acting out.
Why don't we just ban everything!? Let's just ban everything till the we get to the point of having no joy in our lives whatsoever .... oh wait, we're already there.
Video game guns now more illegal than real ones.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Considering that pesticides kill far more people in the western world than guns do; I think we should definitely ban FarmVille... :p
... Gun shaped video game controllers kill people.
This is the best restaurant I ever eat in
Every day the Nordic countries look more and more appealing.
Here we go again...
It seems appropriate that information just out has cast more than doubt on _Seduction of the Innocents_, the book and its
author behind the censorship and restrictions on comic books in the 50s. Once again all the research keeps showing little
if any connection between games/movies/TV and the propensity to violence but the "true believers" know otherwise. It'll
again be "damn the evidence, full speed ahead -> censorship, criminal penalities, etc".
Dr. Frank J. Nagy Fermilab Computing Division Authentication and Directory Services Group
It isn't self-restraint; they're stressed-out, confused, distracted, overfed, under-nourished, medicated to the gills... and on top of that, they're just the same Americans that they were 40 to 60 years ago. We've become stupid, rude, lazy, self-destructive, incredibly gullible and profoundly easy to manipulate. More and more like the peasants that the uber-elite see us as...
No one said real guns are "safe" but I'm guessing you're trying to stir up a totally different shit storm so I'm not going to pander to your low class attempt at misdirection.
they're just the same Americans that they were 40 to 60 years ago.
Oops, that should have read "they're just not the same Americans..."
And you'll keep on researching it, until you give us the answer we want.
I'll be happy to let you ban violent video games if you and your peers are willing to lighten up about, oh... let's say bare breasts appearing on television. Frankly, I'm beyond tired of the dichotomy, wherein a person's insides, blown all over the place by gunfire/explosions, is fit for all ages, but the naked human form (the outside of it, at least) is not.
I can't think of too many gun related massacres which were the direct result of "violent video games". In fact, most were the result of mentally unstable people coming into possession of a some type of device to cause harm -- not just guns. I think a lot of the tragedies could have been prevented had people close to the murderer(s) taken responsible action, early on, when harmful behavior was exhibited:
Most people can "Doom away" 24x7 and have no problem separating fantasy from reality. A small portion cannot. That same small portion who cannot will result to whatever means is at their disposal when they become unstable. Banning guns, video games, magazine capacities, does not address the core issue and actually ignores it.
Role playing is important for healthy mental growth. Video games aid in that role playing for most healthy individuals. Prohibition isn't going to fix anything. Never does.
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I'd say these politicians are jumping the gun, but they've probably introduced a bill to ban doing that as well.
What is this 1995? Do these types of arcade games even exist anymore? Do arcades even exist anymore? Also, the perpetrator of the Aurora shooting was older than 18. Not sure how this is going to solve anything.
More importantly, lets have a study regarding the effects of the united states having troops in nearly every country on earth, being involved in at least 3 wars simultaneously, and the US military glamorizing their profession through television and news adds. If you want to stop gun violence, stop putting rifles into the hands of teenagers and sending them into 3rd world countries to "keep the peace" I don't think playing Halo or hunting squirls with their dads are having anywhere near the effect of what the US governments planting into their heads about guns and "justified violence"
The task force would advise the Governor and General assembly on state programs that "may reduce the effects of political campaign advertising on youth behavior,"
I would say it is just as harmful as violent video games. Look at the assholes who are always winning the elections.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The NRA's new policy of blaming video games is only going to backfire on firearm manufacturers. Part of the alure of top selling firearms like the AR-15 is how cool you think you are as soon as you have one. Take away movies like Rambo and Scareface or video games like Call of Duty (which pays gun manufacturers royalties to depict the various makes and models), and the demand for AR-15s and AK-47s is sure to decline over time.
Hunting as a past time has been on the decline for several decades now, and without movies and video games only sporting enthusiasts from law enforcement and military backgrounds will have much serious interest in these sorts of weapons. The arms industry is going to have to go back into the business of stoking violence between nation states in order to keep their revenues and their stock values growing at a competitive pace.
It's particularly curious when you consider that the US constitution also includes robust speech protections, so it isn't as though this is a 'Well, one is constitutionally protected and the other isn't, our hands are tied here' thing The speech protections don't even include that cryptic stuff about well regulated militias.
People wonder why the shooter in Connecticut did what was done. Just the same, people wonder why the hell the US went to war in the middle east.
All these kids these politicians and lobbyists that "worry" about kids playing violent video games should realize that these same kids have grown up in the post 9/11 Bush terms fraught with publicized and accepted war in the middle east. Certainly, they are not witnessing REAL violence on the television; it's those pretend video games that teaching them that killing real (and innocent) people is acceptable. Hypocrites!
"So don't get programmed by anybody but yourself" --Bill S. Preston, Esquire
I'm expecting that by the end of the year a random person from the federal House to introduce a bill to make all FPS games be considered to be only appropriate for 18+ whether the ESRB likes it or not (and if necessary replace the ESRB with a federal agency).
After years of not using a signature, I am going to make one to say the following: Fuck Beta
Now, if only they would ban stuff that has real danger to the mental health of America.... such as Fox News.
Can we instead ban politicians from speaking?
You must gather your party before venturing forth.
Yes the solution is to make sure that all people are helpless (by law). That will keep them safe! ... So when a person goes wacko (crazy enough to ignore those laws) they will be ... Uhhh ...
... Uhhhh ...
Wait, that isn't turning out the way it was intended.
Well the police will keep us safe! Yes because when all of those violent crimes happen the police are there to save us!
Wait, that was on those episodes of 24 and Hawaii Five-0. On the news the police show up much later and they sometimes figure out who did what to whom (much later...).
Wake up. We live in the safest time in history. Idiot politicians are trying to legislate safety. I have a secret for you: Life has a 100% mortality rate. The "Safety" they are trying to legislate is a feeling.
What business do politicians have trying to legislate safety? They aren't are our nanny's and a government is not a responsible organization. If you had children who made the same choices regarding spending money and honesty you would ground them for life.
Lets talk about outlawing something that is a mass contributor to unhealthful living conditions and is responsible for a number of deaths each year (even when done in a safe fashion). It wastes natural resources at an astounding rate. Lets outlaw it!
A smaller percentage of the country pursues it has a past time the those that pursue shooting as a past time. Doctors used to recommend that people with sever asthma or other lung ailments move to Tucson, AZ (and similar places) because of low pollen counts. So they moved there and then people built golf courses and Tucson no longer had low pollen counts.
Trying to legislate safety by outlawing something that is generally safe because it could conceivably done to cause harm is a direct destruction of liberty, unpatriotic, stupidly insane, and tyrannical. Read up on what Franklin had to say about safety.
You mean you have to use your hands? That's like a baby's toy.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
they're just the same Americans that they were 40 to 60 years ago.
Oops, that should have read "they're just not the same Americans..."
OK, now you can add sloppy to your list. :)
Few people know how to shoot a rifle today. Imagine a population that knows nothing about firearms and becomes engaged in a land war. Bringing troops to the ready will be extremely difficult.
Estimates are that during the Vietnam War 30K-60K bullets were fired for every enemy casualty. In Iran and Afghanistan they speak of a quarter of a million rounds per enemy casualty. To some degree these poor numbers can be laid to "cover fire" but it also cannot be denied that the average army grunt is nowhere as skilled a shot as his grandfather.
Contrast the Civil War (estimates 500 shots/kill) where the largely rural South had an advantage over the urban North because their soldiers had been hunting and shooting all their lives.
I would go the opposite direction: *encourage* target games, and even more realistic simulators, as part of trying to limit availability of real weapons. Insist that anyone who wants a gun license should be able to score high on a realistic simulator, like a driving test. Treat it like karting compared to real car racing.
That said, I have found that games like "Descent" (shooting at robots and mining machines) give me just as much excitement as games shooting at people, with fewer qualms. (Yes, it's an old example.)
PS - book partly based on this concept - "Quozl" by Alan Dean Foster. Aliens have ultra-violent entertainment and games *precisely* to avoid their inclinations to be violent in reality.
Wait, this could be good. What would arcade game manufacturers have to do to work around this? The only thing I can think of would be some sort Kinect-esque system where the child just needs to hold their hand up to the game in a gun like fashion and go "bang, bang" like they do anyway. Or perhaps have one hand as the gun and one hand on a fire button. It could work. This could be a great catalyst for some innovation.
I used to play Time Crisis a lot in college, almost 20 years ago. While drunk. Haven't shot anyone yet.
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...like this 13-year-girl. She's getting out of the house, away from staring at a screen, spending time with family and learning useful skills.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=yd4B77PkeaU
I feel sorry for folks stuck living in places where this sort of thing is prohibited or considered socially unacceptable.
Hey, if we get attacked by floating metal balls, cartoon bullseyes, and aliens at Area 51, I want kids covering my back with covering fire if there's no adults around.
This is the slippery slope. Thanks Liberals.
Don't ban the real guns, its the fake ones that are doing the real harm!
Disagreeing with you does not make me a troll.
Mathematically insignificant really. It's only because of the media sensationalism that this is even a national issue. More people die horrible deaths from so many other things that we do nothing about.
I thought arcades died in the 80's. Only thing I've ever seen that resembles an arcade are those little nooks in malls and movie theaters. Even then the only thing i notice are those damn DDR machines with their flashing lights and techno music.
Whenever a player quits EVE to go play WoW, the Average IQ of both games increase.
How about put parents in jail if their offspring commits crimes under the age of 18?
I can just see this arcades like Dave & Busters having a "membership only area" where for the price a quarter you can join with parents consent where that quarter will be applied to your first game. That would be away around it, right?
Paul: Father... father, the sleeper has awakened! - Dune
To put it bluntly, I could have done almost as much damage almost as fast in the last shooting with a baseball bat. Just the bat would get me through a fair amount of kids before an adult could stop me. I could certainly clear at least one class room.
Of course, adults would be able to stop me easily in groups, but a single class would be toast.
The issue at hand is purely perception. Crazy nut jobs going on killing rampages is hardly new. Its been happening, recorded, for thousands of years. Most of that time BEFORE guns even existed. It happens more often than not ... WITHOUT GUNS, even today.
You are more likely to get struck by lighting twice than to be involved in anything like these, even as a bystander or parent/friend of someone involved. Having grown up in Florida I realize that you can't spend your entire life running from potential lightning stikes or a good part of your life will be wasted running from something that isn't going to happen.
This isn't about gun control, this is about people control and how you are being manipulated. This is about how the media uses events and peoples emotions to gain ratings by blowing things out of proportion so they can sell airtime.
You want this sort of shit to decline? Stop giving it air time. The whole reason this shit happens is because some whacko wants attention and figures out that if he kills a bunch of people, the younger the better (younger draws more public emotion/attention) the news will be all over it and everyone in the world will know his/her name within seconds. Sure, they'll end up dead but that is unimportant for any number of different reasons ranging from religious belief to simply not thinking that far into the future. These are people operating on a faulty CPU, not everything 'makes sense'.
Stop blaming guns for a problem caused by the media.
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WTF is an arcade grampa? (Barely looking up from Cowadoody on the 60" oled display in their bedrooms.)
I'm just waiting for the legislation requiring modification to the human genome, so that the thumb opposes the pinky finger, making it impossible for one to make "pew-pew" hand gestures. After all, this is the root cause of violence in American society, not the recent 4.5 year economic down turn, reduction in psychiatric services, or the continued marketing ploy dividing Americans into convenient niche groups.
Um, AC, you should check the record. Last I checked, Toni Harp is a Democrat, not typically a conservative.
Heh, most dads make comments about sitting on the porch with a shotgun waiting on their daughter to get him from her first date.
I wonder whats going to happen in her house ...
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They'll ban toy guns. Then I wonder what they'll use next as a scapegoat after the next mass shooting. Lets see....anything but guns. When it comes to pinpointing and admitting to the full cause of these shootings, the gun advocates just keep missing the target.
It does, it's just that it is hard to interpret the Bill of Rights as a limitation on rights without mental gymnastics.
For example, if you take the basic statement for the First and Second Amendments, it seems pretty clear. Don't abridge speech, don't infringe on the right to bear arms.
Now, if someone wanted to interpret those statements in a manner to imply a limitation on rights, they will focus on the peculiarities in the wording. For the Second, people like to focus on the terminology of regulated and militia. For the First, they will focus on the term 'Press'.
As you can see, it's the same process for both Rights. People who want to curtail those rights will use the wording to try and carve out a protected subclass of the citizenry. Conveniently, this subclass often doesn't have the same concerns/interests as the newly excluded, so you can expect less resistance from them since 'their Rights' have been preserved.
In essence: Beware anyone who tries to ascribe a Right to a subset of the population.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
I recently read This (https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/chris-dorner-wrongful-termination) article. It leans towards social issues spurring violence, not desensitization. It's probably as biased as any other source of news, but I think it puts forward an interesting point of view that doesn't see much serious consideration.
They'd ban children from attending churches until they were old enough to think for themselves.
First they burn books, then they burn people.
is not the appropriate place to start the body of your message.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Guns project pieces of metal at high velocity. Why someone would want to do that has nothing to do with it.
Some of us enjoy doing so to master the skills/controls required to do it accurately. Not all of us wish or would kill people (or even animals) with them.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
I look forward to taking my kids hunting when they are older. My 4 1/2 year old already likes going fishing and we went almost every weekend last spring summer and fall (when the weather wasn't shitty or there weren't other plans). Then this is the same child who also last summer learned how to operate the chain saw (with dad's help) but lots of people would find that offensive as well, including my neighbor who calls the cops on me all the time.
Time to offend someone
Dad probably won't have to worry but the boy friend will.
Time to offend someone
The idea is that if you can't repeal the 2nd Amendment, try work around it - by using methods like stigmatization and brainwashing.
My other UID is three digits.
The UK's handgun ban is still a relatively recent thing.
The strange part would be that if you go back in history before the gun ban, the US murder rate was even higher and the UK's lower. After you banned guns your murder rate rose/remained stable(mostly), while after a time the US murder rate underwent a huge drop.
Oh, and the black thing - I'm not racist, but we have done some incredibly bad things to the blacks in our country; as a result a violent and destructive culture has developed; mostly self-destructive. There are areas in the USA where if you're a black man the odds are you'll die a violent death before 40.
In general, if you're not in those areas, as a white person you're safer in the USA than you are in Europe.
I don't read AC A human right
nor are the real ones.. It's a toxic, oppressively passive aggressive culture obsessed with political correctness over truth that pushes lanzas over the line. While our politicians bicker about access to methods, they conveniently (for them) ignore their own parts in it.
Seriously?
Your sarcasm detector needs new batteries.
When I was a kid, I went to the arcade. I played violent point and shoot video games such as Space Invaders. I turned out o . . . turned out o . . .um, . . . okay.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
nor are the real ones.. It's a toxic, oppressively passive aggressive culture obsessed with political correctness over truth that pushes lanzas over the line. While our politicians bicker about access to methods, they conveniently (for them) ignore their own parts in it.
Of course, we can just ignore those gun violence stats that say that people do use real guns to kill people.
Disagreeing with you does not make me a troll.
I turned out o . . . turned out o . . .um, . . . okay.
...and anyone who disagrees with that should take it up with my friends Smith and Weston....
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
What's an arcade?
UTF-8: There and Back Again
Both the left and the right are yelling at each other, and making really stupid points without getting anything of substance done about gun violence.
Banning toy guns is something that the Left thinks 'Sounds Good", and the Right thinks is taking away their "god given" right to guns, and is just total bullshit. And I consider myself a Liberal.
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
' ... proposed a bill in January that would ban anyone younger than 18 from playing 'violent point-and-shoot' video games in arcades or other public establishments.'
No fake plastic guns in public for you, laddie. Fake plastic guns in the home, fine. In public, you must use real guns! But fake ones, NEVER!
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)