Connecticut Lawmaker Calls For Taxes, Warning Labels On M-Rated Games
- Thread starter Andy Chalk
- Start date
Isn't the tax thing going to bump against laws that have already been challenged anyway, meaning even if the law had passed it would simply be another waste of taxpayer dollars?
Guns-1
Games-0.
I'd say video games are a fairly trivial part of that, though. With laws on who you can marry, who you can have sex with, who you can worship, who has to carry papers with them, who the police are obligated to serve, and who can be refused service in a public establishment, video games comes pretty low on that list. That's not to say games don't matter, but they should hardly be the breaking point in the notion of smaller government or more freedom.
Except that actually is a danger, one that's been documented by more than quote-mined, dishonest, and misrepresented disparate studies. This is more like mandating schools teach children that masturbation will cause their eyesight to go bad.Andy Chalk said:
They want more. They want parents to be terrified that their kids are going to become anti-social, immoral and violent. Hell, I'm surprised they haven't thrown in "gay," "liberal" and "atheist" just to hit all the buttons.TiberiusEsuriens said:
Congress--state or federal--is kind of like Who's Line Is It Anyway? It's a forum where everything's made up and the points don't matter. If they did, we wouldn't still be having this discussion.MarsAtlas said:
You can find them through a google search. Of course, you can also find numerous sites about the Earth being flat....marioandsonic said:
Similar positions to what? We don't really know what set Lanza off. I mean, they're using VIDJA GAEMZ to fill in the gap, but what do we actually know?Sniper Team 4 said:
He also wore pants. You know who else wore pants? Jack the Ripper!CriticalMiss said:
The problem here is that participating in the debate seems to just fuel it. The only real way to win seems to be not to play.Scrumpmonkey said:
Ironically, if Meat Boy had had a gun, he could have used Castle Doctrine and/or Stand Your Ground to defend his girlfriend and there would be no game.MCerberus said:
Guns-1
Games-0.
The PR department, yes.Tanis said:
I'd say video games are a fairly trivial part of that, though. With laws on who you can marry, who you can have sex with, who you can worship, who has to carry papers with them, who the police are obligated to serve, and who can be refused service in a public establishment, video games comes pretty low on that list. That's not to say games don't matter, but they should hardly be the breaking point in the notion of smaller government or more freedom.
Thankfully most of this attitude is on the way out - few parents of young children are this out of touch anymore, but it doesn't stop the morality panic police from trying to score points by stoking the latest imaginary outrage.
I did get a good laugh about the warning label thing. Put a warning label on the warning label!
I did get a good laugh about the warning label thing. Put a warning label on the warning label!
I wonder if she realizes that videogames, M rated or otherwise, already have labels on them that rather explicitly inform potential buyers of the content found therein. I'm guessing probably not.
Typical political crap. Ignore the real problems and focus on providing people with false sense of accomplishment by promising to give them what you'd previously told them they want.
*sigh* As has already been said, there ARE warning labels you daft woman, it's called the ESRB label.
HAH. Well said good sirs, well said.MarsAtlas said:Ah, Philosoraptor.marioandsonic said:
This is hilarious in so many ways:
1. M rated video games come with a warning label. It's the M-rating label.
2. The last notable statehouse member to push this kind of law turned out to be a gun dealer:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leland_Yee#Arrest_on_corruption_charges_and_gun_trafficking
1. M rated video games come with a warning label. It's the M-rating label.
2. The last notable statehouse member to push this kind of law turned out to be a gun dealer:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leland_Yee#Arrest_on_corruption_charges_and_gun_trafficking
That sir is the question. Funny that it takes a dinosaur to get to the nub of the issue.MarsAtlas said:Ah, Philosoraptor.marioandsonic said:
First, to post a photo, you need brackets set up. it should like "[ img ]" and then "[ /img]", without those spaces. Then you right-click an image, "copy image URL", and post it between the brackets. Quote this post to see it.
Funny, but flawed. No one is saying that the games are literally killing people. If anything, games are being propped up as being motive or an influence to motive. It's a ridiculous claim, like trying to say that a gun store is responsible for a murder because it sold a gun to a guy with ten fingers. But game and gun are comparable in this topic.MarsAtlas said:marioandsonic said:
...Here we go again...
Millions of people play games every day, the average gamer is now in their thirties, and real-world violent crime has trended down even as some of the most violent game franchises were at their peak. These things almost never seem to come with an attendant attempt to curtail other forms of violent entertainment; only the ones that the would-be crusader finds new and strange and frightening.
I'm beginning to wish we could just have a form response: Chill out (Mom/Dad), you grew up during (the height of drug culture/the rock-and-roll is corrupting our youth phase/the heyday of exploitation cinema/the heyday of slasher cinema/(fill in the blank)), and you managed not to kill anyone; can you recognize that today's youth isn't any more susceptible to that wacky, dangerous beast that is modern pop culture than you were?
Millions of people play games every day, the average gamer is now in their thirties, and real-world violent crime has trended down even as some of the most violent game franchises were at their peak. These things almost never seem to come with an attendant attempt to curtail other forms of violent entertainment; only the ones that the would-be crusader finds new and strange and frightening.
I'm beginning to wish we could just have a form response: Chill out (Mom/Dad), you grew up during (the height of drug culture/the rock-and-roll is corrupting our youth phase/the heyday of exploitation cinema/the heyday of slasher cinema/(fill in the blank)), and you managed not to kill anyone; can you recognize that today's youth isn't any more susceptible to that wacky, dangerous beast that is modern pop culture than you were?
Look. It's the bipartisan whipping boy. "Video games are evulz." Democrat, Republican, Liberal, Conservative, or anything else. We can all scream about this awful new media.
Man, I can't wait til someone invents Super Porn, then that will be the new whipping boy.
Anyway, I understand that she's trying to make sense of the tragedy of Sandy Hook and DO SOMETHING to prevent it, but that's wrong headed. Living in fear of another Sandy Hook or Columbine is exactly what gives these people power.
Guns are already heavily taxed, too. And frankly taxing something because you don't like it is the exact same mindset as this awful politician. Might as well tax extra large sodas.
About the only way to make it more difficult to get a gun would be to ban them. Which directly conflicts with the Second Amendment.
And while I'm at it, The Brady Campaign, an antigun group, states that there are 30,000 gun deaths each year. However, this includes suicides and lawful kills, such as by police or in self defense. Suicides by gun make up about 20,000 deaths in any given year. They then state that guns are used in defense about 50,000 times a year, often without even being fired. Mind you, this is from an antigun group who I already showed was misleading you on the deaths. That number of guns used in defense is probably far greater. I once heard a study showed it as high as a million times a year, but even those who conducted the study thought that was too high.
While we're at it, gun violence, crime, and violence in general, is down and has been trending down for more than a decade. This is despite the downturn of the economy which actually surprised many experts who expected to see an uptick in violence and crime during this time.
Man, I can't wait til someone invents Super Porn, then that will be the new whipping boy.
Anyway, I understand that she's trying to make sense of the tragedy of Sandy Hook and DO SOMETHING to prevent it, but that's wrong headed. Living in fear of another Sandy Hook or Columbine is exactly what gives these people power.
Done and done. Guns are already hard to get. You must have a background check if you buy from a licensed firearm dealer, and only license dealers can legally sell guns. Illegally selling a gun is a good way to lose their livelihood. Criminals are not permitted to purchase or even own guns. Knowingly purchasing a gun for a criminal is a crime. Knowingly giving a gun to a criminal is a crime. And there are plenty more, too.Sniper Team 4 said:
Guns are already heavily taxed, too. And frankly taxing something because you don't like it is the exact same mindset as this awful politician. Might as well tax extra large sodas.
About the only way to make it more difficult to get a gun would be to ban them. Which directly conflicts with the Second Amendment.
And while I'm at it, The Brady Campaign, an antigun group, states that there are 30,000 gun deaths each year. However, this includes suicides and lawful kills, such as by police or in self defense. Suicides by gun make up about 20,000 deaths in any given year. They then state that guns are used in defense about 50,000 times a year, often without even being fired. Mind you, this is from an antigun group who I already showed was misleading you on the deaths. That number of guns used in defense is probably far greater. I once heard a study showed it as high as a million times a year, but even those who conducted the study thought that was too high.
While we're at it, gun violence, crime, and violence in general, is down and has been trending down for more than a decade. This is despite the downturn of the economy which actually surprised many experts who expected to see an uptick in violence and crime during this time.
Today it is video games.
Yesterday it was Rock Music.
The day before it was Comic Books.
The week before it was Movies.
Last month it was Paintings.
And last year it was Books.
Because god-forbid the media portrays the violence innate to my species whilst you reject the concept of controlling who gets hold of a weapon deigned to kill because of a grammatical error. Perhaps people like Adam Lanza picked up a gun and shot his mother and Primary School kids not because he played video games, but because he was severely disturbed individual and should have not been able to access any kind of firearm. Perhaps when you try to feed bullshit like 'Countless studies', you give an actually study. Maybe when your people, your community's children, are shot dead by another member of that community, you think about some kind of plan to prevent this from happening again that isn't trying to place the blame on a medium that had little to do with it.
Yesterday it was Rock Music.
The day before it was Comic Books.
The week before it was Movies.
Last month it was Paintings.
And last year it was Books.
Because god-forbid the media portrays the violence innate to my species whilst you reject the concept of controlling who gets hold of a weapon deigned to kill because of a grammatical error. Perhaps people like Adam Lanza picked up a gun and shot his mother and Primary School kids not because he played video games, but because he was severely disturbed individual and should have not been able to access any kind of firearm. Perhaps when you try to feed bullshit like 'Countless studies', you give an actually study. Maybe when your people, your community's children, are shot dead by another member of that community, you think about some kind of plan to prevent this from happening again that isn't trying to place the blame on a medium that had little to do with it.
There are already warning labels.
these labels are from the ESRB and M is one of their already existing warning labels. This law is a redundant and a waste of time.
don't politicians have better things to do with there time like balancing a budget or something like that.
these labels are from the ESRB and M is one of their already existing warning labels. This law is a redundant and a waste of time.
don't politicians have better things to do with there time like balancing a budget or something like that.