VP Joe Biden Claims "No Restriction" Against Taxing Violent Games

[Spartanmk1]

Meanwhile, in New Orleans another shooting happened. Three guys gunned Mother day parade participants...With real world guns... that shoot real world bullets... at real world people.

Americans, question: what percentage of American citizens are against gun restriction? I just want to understand whether your politicians are idiots (or pretending to be ones), or they just don't want to lose votes?

The reason why serious gun control is unconstitutional is literally right next to the reason why a "violent media tax" is unconstitutional.

Yeah, yeah, second ammendment... Written during muskets era... I bet Washington & Co knew that in the future we'll have firearms that can literally slaughter about 50 people in about 15 seconds.

Anyhow, about percentages... Any info?

Someone doesn't know about the Puckle gun [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puckle_gun], on top of cannons. Cannons that could be loaded with canister shot. Cannons which at the time, were privately owned and leased to the fledgling United States government.

You know, the same thing could be said about 1A too. At the time all they had to communicate with was a meeting or the printing press. They could not even begin to imagine the world we live in today, where you can coordinate attacks from around the world in an instant.

 

[Baresark]

People who think this is about violent video games or guns are just plain ignorant. It's about a further tax revenue for the shitty US Government. And if you don't see that, you are part of the problem.

 

[Longstreet]

Oh great, this BS again.

Seriously, is there ANY value to this discussion besides scoring easy points with old fucks?
That is the fundamental problem aswell, half the people in office are old fucks.

They still believe "video games" are for the nerdy and elitest of the elite computer knowledge wise and hardly anyone got one.

News flash, that aint true.

Besides, if someone with ZERO video games in his house would shoot a room full of people they say "guns don't kill people, people kill people." Because their beloved precious AR15/M4 variant comes in danger.

However if he has even ONE video game is his house. Even if it is dora the bloody explorer, video games get blamed.

I still vote for, whenever this topic comes up in this way by a politician, it is a valid counter argument to say;

"no seriously, fuck off."


And like the user above me said, what i foolishly overlooked while going on this small rant;

It's all about the benjamins.

 

[Serrenitei]

There's multiple problems with this. First, when he says there's no legal reason, what he means is that there's no legal precedent. The legality of such a policy is unknown BUT chances are that it would fail. By and large, the government avoids regulation of the media -- that's not to say entirely, but by a large margin.

Setting a strange precedent like taxing 'violent video games' opens the door for a lot of potential censorship issues that could be applied to all media, not just video games. The chilling effect would be pretty substantial across the board, because once the legal precedent has been set with video games, books, movies, and music can all quickly be covered under the Media Sanitation efforts (as I'm coming to think of them).

The chilling effect comes in because violence, specifically in video games, is a vague concept. It's easy to say something is 'violent.' Arguments could be made about Mario Kart being violent and promoting road rage, or that Minecraft promotes violence because it has swords. Even adding a qualify like "violence against humans" gets muddy because what level of fidelity has to be matched with 'humans' to qualify for the violence law.

Vagueness is one of the reasons that the Brown vs. EMA was decided in favor of the EMA. Senator Yee's bill could not adequately quantify the term 'ultra-violent' sufficiently for the Justices (there were other precedents cited in there, I'm just saying vagueness was one of them - lack of preponderance of evidence on the negative effects of video games was another big one).

The vagueness of legislating for 'violent' has 2 potential outcomes - either thrown out as unenforceable due to vagueness or a chilling effect in media to do everything possible to avoid being labelled as violent. The chilling effect would likely have far reaching, intended consequences.

 

[Scars Unseen]

Joe Biden: Once again demonstrating that just because you can speak doesn't mean you should.

 

[The Material Sheep]

YEeeeeeeeeeeeeeah look its Joe Biden pretending to be important by trying to impose more fascist government control with the guise of protecting people!

Le sigh... gotta love politicians. They truly have no care in the world other then increasing their own power.

Yay for me being cynical!

 

[Parakeettheprawn]

I love being an Englishman at times, one reason is that we don't have to deal with this. Non-religious government ftw.

How is religion the problem here? I'm somehow Christian, yet want gun regulation similar to how things are in Australia, and also not supportive of what Biden is doing here, or of ignorance in the country in general.

The original founders of the United States were, in majority, deists and/or agnostics, therefore meaning most of our primary laws were set by men actually not that religious. Or that maybe the whole "all Christians are conservative derps" is becoming one of the most tired stereotypes on the internet and are almost immediate sign of lack of actually knowing what you're talking about? Also, Britain produced Tolkein and C.S. Lewis, not America. They are far more genuinely talking about religion (in Lewis' case, going so far as to discussing several other major philosophical beliefs before even touching upon his own faith in Christianity) when you really think about it, than any Tea Party advocate talking about "family values" like as if having the right for a four year old to have a gun is somehow more important than accepting the fact that homosexuality shouldn't be a mark upon someone or that racism shouldn't be encouraged by this point. Did you ever consider maybe it's just politicians and would-be politicians (looking at you, Glenn Beck) taking things to almost parodical extremes and sheep that follow them mindlessly that are the cause? It almost reads like a Mel Brooks movie but unfortunately is the reality we live in.

 

[Schadrach]

Plus, as far as I am aware, no one wants to take away hunting rifles, pistols and such, only automatic firearms. Is it really that bad?

You talking about the "assault weapons" laws that have been proposed and generally shot down in several places?

You show a terrible misunderstanding of what is meant by "assault weapons."

First of, fully automatic weapons (the kind you can "spray and pray" with) are already restricted, in that they require a special license that is fairly expensive to own, and are individually very very expensive guns.

The "assault weapons" laws that have been tried recently use relatively stupid definitions of what qualifies as an "assault weapon", to the point that in certain cases there were nerf guns that qualify and in others one could hot glue some things to a baseball bat and it would technically qualify. Some made it such that changing the stock or grip on an otherwise OK weapon would redefine it to be an assault weapon (hint: the stock and grip have nothing to do with how many rounds one can fire in a given unit time or the destructive potential of said rounds). Others defined any semi-automatic (those are the ones that fire one round when the trigger is pulled, but eject the casing and load another round so it's ready for another trigger pull and are literally almost everything you think of when you think of handguns) weapon that could support a magazine holding more than n rounds as an assault weapon (protip: any weapon with a detachable magazine theoretically "can support" a magazine of basically arbitrary size, accordingly this qualified all semi-automatic weapons that have a detachable magazine as assault weapons, because you could technically make a large enough magazine).

 

[theultimateend]

I love being an Englishman at times, one reason is that we don't have to deal with this. Non-religious government ftw.

US is weird. It >feels< like a largely liberal leaning country that is run by a seemingly universally conservative government.

I think the problem is that fundamentalists are more driven and are more likely to vote because of it. Like they maybe see their goals as being not only correct but immediately important.

Or something, I dunno. I just know its weird living here sometimes. This whole TSA tail between the legs kneejerk after 9/11, the surveillance state thing that neither reduces crime nor improves prosecution rates (just makes folks uncomfortable), and then the government being run by folks who apparently got C's or worse in their maths and sciences.

I know they are mostly lawyers but that's almost hard for me to believe because I feel like being good with law would require solid mental faculties. So strange.

How is religion the problem here? I'm somehow Christian, yet want gun regulation similar to how things are in Australia, and also not supportive of what Biden is doing here, or of ignorance in the country in general.

The original founders of the United States were, in majority, deists and/or agnostics, therefore meaning most of our primary laws were set by men actually not that religious. Or that maybe the whole "all Christians are conservative derps" is becoming one of the most tired stereotypes on the internet and are almost immediate sign of lack of actually knowing what you're talking about? Also, Britain produced Tolkein and C.S. Lewis, not America. They are far more genuinely talking about religion (in Lewis' case, going so far as to discussing several other major philosophical beliefs before even touching upon his own faith in Christianity) when you really think about it, than any Tea Party advocate talking about "family values" like as if having the right for a four year old to have a gun is somehow more important than accepting the fact that homosexuality shouldn't be a mark upon someone or that racism shouldn't be encouraged by this point. Did you ever consider maybe it's just politicians and would-be politicians (looking at you, Glenn Beck) taking things to almost parodical extremes and sheep that follow them mindlessly that are the cause? It almost reads like a Mel Brooks movie but unfortunately is the reality we live in.

Ehhh...

The founding fathers were deists but the majority of congressmen were not. There is such thing as moderate religious people (the majority probably are) but these people are not who are elected as lawmakers.

Given how Slavery and other injustices in the Early US History were adamantly defended as being "the word of god" sort of poops in your point too. The US has consistently used faith to support injustice for centuries now. Even in the 90's you could listen to dozens upon dozens of congressmen specifically citing the Christian God as their reasoning for hating homosexuals.

It's still present now but they are becoming less vocal about linking it with Christianity now because even large Christian organizations seem to be quietly flipping their views on the issue of homosexuals being human. Which is nice, its good to see Bigotry getting punched in the balls.

PS. US Family Values groups always cite Christianity as the source for their movement as well.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

I love being an Englishman at times, one reason is that we don't have to deal with this. Non-religious government ftw.

Even better, if something ever came of this (which is extremely unlikely since it's a throwaway answer given after a vague question) we could advertise the UK as a tax free videogame company haven. Come to us Valve! bring your jobs and money! We'll let you keep it... mostly.

 

[uncanny474]

Meanwhile, in New Orleans another shooting happened. Three guys gunned Mother day parade participants...With real world guns... that shoot real world bullets... at real world people.

Americans, question: what percentage of American citizens are against gun restriction? I just want to understand whether your politicians are idiots (or pretending to be ones), or they just don't want to lose votes?

It doesn't matter. In America, politics are run by Lobbyists, who are representatives of various corporations. Since apparently enough of the country is stupid enough to get swayed by pretty words and pretentious advertisements, these companies can buy and sell any lawmakers they need, who then push their agendas.

In short, so long as there is more money in making guns than not making them, gun control will continue to be stymied.

 

[Lovely Mixture]

Joe Biden. This is the guy who takes over if something happens to Obama. This guy. And people, you voted for him if you voted Obama. Pray nothing happens to Obama.

Or pray if someone takes a shot they get em both

Would be far more productive!

Look; I'm all for bashing dumb politicians, but I draw the line at advocating their deaths.

 

[theultimateend]

I love being an Englishman at times, one reason is that we don't have to deal with this. Non-religious government ftw.

Even better, if something ever came of this (which is extremely unlikely since it's a throwaway answer given after a vague question) we could advertise the UK as a tax free videogame company haven. Come to us Valve! bring your jobs and money! We'll let you keep it... mostly.

I wouldn't mind moving. I'm pretty fond of the weather there (spent 20 years of my life in Washington so far).

Joe Biden. This is the guy who takes over if something happens to Obama. This guy. And people, you voted for him if you voted Obama. Pray nothing happens to Obama.

Or pray if someone takes a shot they get em both

Would be far more productive!

Look; I'm all for bashing dumb politicians, but I draw the line act advocating their deaths.

I look at it as a sign of extreme laziness.

"EW! You want me to be politically active and interested!? Why can't we just murder people I don't like . So much easier :/."

 

[Something Amyss]

I never got why they argue free speech in the first place. This should fall under commerce.

I love being an Englishman at times, one reason is that we don't have to deal with this. Non-religious government ftw.

Aren't your ratings legally binding?

 

[B5Alpha]

I love being an Englishman at times, one reason is that we don't have to deal with this. Non-religious government ftw.

So I guess you Brits are just hiding Tony Blair under the rug then?

OT: I'm wondering who let Biden out of his cage again. He always causes a commotion when he's with the media. Honestly, gaming is too mainstream and even if the Supreme Court would allow a tax to break the 1st amendment, it would never get to them, because as much as politicians love catering to wealthy special interest groups, they still need people to vote for them.

 

[1337mokro]

The second amendment in favour of the first. Which is the greatest irony there is seeing as the second apparently exists to protect all those other amendments. Not that they cared when congress started violating them one by one. They are way to fat to get of their asses and actually change anything in their political system.

Good job America. Good job!

 

[JazzJack2]

I love being an Englishman at times, one reason is that we don't have to deal with this. Non-religious government ftw.

Erm you do realise that,

A)This has sod all to do with religion

B)The UK government is inherently Christian where as the American government has no ties to Christianity.

 

[Ace Morologist]

Man, people get riled up when old politicians sneer in the direction of stuff.

Sure, sure, it would be silly for the government to try to tax away or outright ban violent video games. And it would be hypocritical. And it would have a detrimental effect on the entertainment industry. And it wouldn't last.

But come on, folks. One guy (I hope jokingly) advocated a second civil war. Another suggested that killing the president and vice president would make things all better. That's... what? Asinine? Juvenile? Probably.

So settle the heck on down. It's not like even your most reasoned and impassioned arguments are doing the country any good on some random Internet forum anyway. You want to change the way our government treats the things you like? Go become a proactive and influential lobbyist with a broad outreach capability. Those are the guys our lawmakers listen to.

--Morology!

 

[RJ 17]

Look, here's the simple fact of the matter: if someone can't differentiate between fantasy (i.e. videogames) and reality, then them playing violent videogames is the least of your worries.