California Senator Leland Yee Tells Gamers To Shut Up And Let The Grown Ups Talk
from the awww...-your-pet-legislation-got-shot-down-by-the-Supreme-Court...-u-mad-bro? dept
As we've noted, recent events have pushed the discussion of video games (namely the violent ones) back to the forefront. Even the President has chimed in, authorizing the CDC to perform a study to determine if any link exists between violent media (including video games) and so-called "gun violence."While most gamers (and indeed, most people who can put two and two together without adding a bunch of rhetoric into the equation) have come to the rather sensible conclusion that violent games do not create violent people, the floor is still open to debate, most likely for the next several years. The sheer number of violent video games sold has failed, over the course of many years, to be matched by a comparable escalation in violent crime. If you're a gamer, you've probably thrown this argument into the debate a number of times and wondered why more people, especially those who active work to censor violent games, haven't arrived at the same conclusion.
Well, if so, here's your answer, courtesy of California State Senator Leland Yee, whose last effort to censor video games was shut down by the US Supreme Court.
"Gamers have got to just quiet down," Yee, D-San Francisco, said in an interview Tuesday. "Gamers have no credibility in this argument. This is all about their lust for violence and the industry's lust for money. This is a billion-dollar industry. This is about their self-interest."You got that, gamers? No credibility. None. Beat it. If we want to talk about video games, like grown ups, we'll do it without you. We'll just talk to senators and the CDC and concerned parents' groups and the NRA. But we won't be talking to game developers. No way. And certainly not gamers, whose opinion amounts to nothing in a debate of this (periodic) importance.
You know who else won't be included in this conversation until absolutely necessary? The Supreme Court. Because if anyone's opinion is invalid, it's the highest court in the land.
Yee, a former child psychologist, believes the court set the standard too high for any study to firmly link the cause and effect of violence.Yes. This court, which stated that any effects caused by violent video games were too small to be distinguished from effects produced by other media, needs to butt out. Fortunately for Yee, the Supreme Court rarely offers an opinion until asked directly, unlike the millions of gamers who spout off in every forum imaginable.
Yes, Yee is right about the industry being self-interested. It does have a lot at stake, especially if some sort of government regulation results from this renewed attention. Pleasing a government censor is a lot harder than pleasing an independent ratings group. One has a political motivation to save humanity (mostly "the children") from "violent media." The other has an interest in preserving its autonomy by doing its job properly and giving each game a rating that reflects the content. In other words, one is more willing to kill the end result of $30 million in production costs in order to score political victories while the other wants to make sure mature content doesn't end up with a family-friendly T slapped across the front of the case.
Elsewhere in the article, you can find thoughtful comments from the very people Yee feels should just shut up. Kris Graft, editor-in-chief of Gamasutra, feels the violent video game problem is one of perception.
"It's not all about shooting people in the head and guts everywhere, but that's what the public perception is, and probably rightfully so," said Kris Graft, editor-in-chief of the San Francisco-based site Gamasutra, which along with its print magazine sibling, Game Developer, covers the video game industry. "There is plenty of diversity in video games, but I don't think it's being highlighted enough."So does Kate Edwards of IGDA:
"It's important to point out that some of the most popular video games in history are all titles such as 'Wii Sports,' 'The Sims,' 'Super Mario Brothers,' the Pokemon series and 'Tetris,' " said Kate Edwards, executive director of the trade group International Game Developers Association. "So while the games containing more violence get the attention, they're not a reflection of the game industry as a whole, just as a single genre of film, TV or literature doesn't represent that medium as a whole."Edwards also welcomes the CDC's study, stating that it will add to the "large body" of existing studies that have failed to show a link between fake violence and real violence.
But Yee doesn't want to hear from these people, who are rightly concerned because they have an investment in this industry and who feel this added attention is doing harm to not only their careers, but also to the games they love.
The people who should be keeping their mouths shut, or at least, sitting in the back with their hands folded until called upon, are those who know nothing about video games beyond scare reels put together by like-minded individuals and anecdotal "evidence" cobbled together out of headlines like 'Adam Lanza played Call of Duty' and 'Hans Breivik said Call of Duty taught him how to use guns.' Without a broader overview of the history, the industry and the culture, they're operating with a damaged data set culled from all the worst humanity has to offer and linked together by a single, gossamer strand of self-identifying as "gamers," ignoring the millions of other self-identifying gamers who are indistinguishable from others who have never played a game in their lives, united by the much thicker linkage of never having committed a violent crime.
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Filed Under: california, debate, leland yee, video games, violence
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To summarize...
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Re: To summarize...
They will keep on doing the same Corrupted Things they do.
I hate this Government !!! F#ck Off !!
Playing some more Mass Effect and then I will go wacko and think the General Population has been Indoctrinated and I am Commander Shepard the Renegade.Must stop those Reapers.Thinking all those people walking down the Street are Enemies.
Dream on Asshole Politicians ! You won't stop me Gaming and you will never attack my Punk Rock Music and think you can succeed.You do realize that they will start at Games, Attack Music like the Punk Rock I play, Attack the films we watch, and Censor Books.They will want it all.Games will just be their first casuilty.
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I realize the NRA started the rift by blaming video games, but weapons don't kill, any more than cars do. Falling rocks do kill though. I'd rather have a gun in my hand than a cop on the phone.
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=)
I will never understand why some of the most militant sounding people turn right around and deny their own right to protection from government.
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They know best, so just shut up so they can give you your opinion.
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By the way, for self defence unarmed combat is much more useful, as trying to draw a gun when being directly threatened by a knife or gun likely to result in its use.
How many of yout police have been killed by weapon when confronting a suspect with a holstered weapon?
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That wasn't very obvious. But those same children probably steal their parents car, or money, whenever they want too.
"By the way, for self defence unarmed combat is much more useful, as trying to draw a gun when being directly threatened by a knife or gun likely to result in its use."
I've only had one person come at me with a weapon. He tried to use it. He got a real life lesson on how when using a weapon against someone, it can be used against them. He will never use a weapon on another again. I was unarmed, as usual. I don't condone using weapons of any kind on another human being.
"How many of yout police have been killed by weapon when confronting a suspect with a holstered weapon?"
What are we talking about here? A shootout at dawn?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqABkG1JpHM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iK2ndUyKE8
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Smash smash suumash
Thanks Kai!
Would you have felt more comfortable controlling this 300lb'er with a gun rather than being forced to split his skull open with a hatchet?
Just one last question please Kai? In hindsight, wouldn't it have been better to have just called 911?
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Seriously - granstanding politicians aren't winning themselves any more favors. Gamers constitute a *huge* voting population now - from the aforementioned Call of Duty players, World of Warcraft players such as myself, to grandmothers playing Farmville... We are legion!
foolish politicians will be foolish...
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What?
It's not like California has anything else going for it right now.
Just lots of violence, high prices on EVERYTHING, no jobs...
Basically, they're people who have a LOT of free time on their hands.
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Dunno, Congress lately seems to be nothing BUT grandstanding politicians...
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Sorry, Tim, you made a mistake.
But they will be talking to game developers. Didn't the NRA announce a couple of games? Aren't they a game developer?
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Re: Sorry, Tim, you made a mistake.
What this boils down to is that human beings make a distinction between good and bad violence. It's intriguing to me that this is a Democrat. One of the calling cards of their way of doing business is to eventually medicalize everything and come at it from that direction. You see Yee here making the comment that he is going to have the decision studied to see what new angle they can come at it from. It will likely be based on this little tidbit here -
"California�s Act does not adjust the boundaries of an existing category of unprotected speech to ensure that a definition designed for adults is not uncritically applied to children."
They won't end up needing to prove the kids do anything wrong. Merely that there is some documented "medical harm".
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Is this the law?
ENTERTAINMENT MERCHANTS ASSOCIATION ET AL.
I think the more interesting question that is not getting raised here is why people continue to object to violent video games and their perceived marketing to children. This decision is fairly one sided, and the Supreme Court took it up apparently to put an exclamation point on the fact that these sorts of laws need to stop coming up, but they still do.
There are apparently a lot of people out there enraged at the gaming industry, and I think entertainment just in general, over what is perceived to be a torrent of negative, unwanted entertainment that kids then harass their parents for. I know some parents just feel beleaguered by a culture seemingly steeped in violence and filth, and nothing ever seems to stem that tide.
I am not for these laws. I love violent video games in fact. But there is something to this - something that is not getting a lot of airtime either in media or among most pundits. I think people are just growing sick of sickness being the status quo.
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Re: Is this the law?
ENTERTAINMENT MERCHANTS ASSOCIATION ET AL.
I give up this time if it still doesn't work. Promise.
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Re: Is this the law?
So then why can't they be honest and say "we want the law to shut the media up because my kids are annoying me."
This whole "for the children" argument just screams "bad parents want to get out of having to parent."
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FTFY
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If people are still so out of touch as to consider gaming not to be an adult activity, they certainly don't deserve to have a say in how to regulate it.
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Absolutely disgusting
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Words matter.
Military-industrial complex much? Hollywood? Music industry? Telcos? Cable?
Look in the mirror, you asshole.
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Nothing wrong with that at all. I think wholesome sports stars like Michael Vick were probably a big player of Pokemon...
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ROFLMAO
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One, I know those are fake
Two, I never have to physically reload
Three, I never have to properly care for the gun, maintain it.
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At least...
And yes, here in Texas we are embarrassed that we can't seem to deport Lamar Smith to some place very dark and very cold where he can't attempt harm anyone ever again.
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Pure trolling
Guess SCOTUS telling him to STFU isn't enough. Maybe holding lawmakers in contempt (e.g. tossing them into jail for a week, a month or maybe a year) might be a solution. It worked for the the terrorists at Gitmo, right?
I'm bordering on trolling here myself but I have a problem with lawmakers infringing on what I can do legally in my own home on my own time. Belmont when after smoking in condos and apartments (which I don't do but reserve the right for anyone to smoke in their own home).
Now he wants to come after video games? You'll have to pry the keyboard out of my cold dead fingers, Senator Yee.
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Re: Pure trolling
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By changing a few words, this ludicrous statement can be slung right back at Mr. Yee:
"Politicians have got to just quiet down," said some anonymous guy the internet Friday. "Politicians have no credibility in this argument. This is all about their lust for control and their lust for campaign contributions. This is a billion-dollar industry. This is about their self-interest."
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You just admitted you're a witch! Burn the witch!
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Grand Theft Auto IV....
So um.... I guess I like violent, filthy video games.
In GTA IV's defense, the smut is not particularly graphic... I don't know how much of a defense that actually is given the graphic nature of the VIOLENCE, but the smut is pretty tame.
Apparently violent misogyny is ok as long as it's not sexually graphic.
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And don't get me started over your weird prurience over 'gabling' :)
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Video Games are Not Violent...
Instead of repeating the false rhetoric of "violent video games", I believe it would be more helpful, to those who are against censorship of video games, to use the following rhetoric:
"Fantasy Violence in Video Games"
or
"Video Games that portray fantasy violence"
...etc.
Using false rhetoric such as "violent video games" only helps the authoritarians in spreading their collectivistic nanny state propaganda.
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Re: Video Games are Not Violent...
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Rebuttal from an AC
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Because fuck the economy. That's why
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Re: Because fuck the economy. That's why
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But those ARE very VIOLENT games!
-Wii Sports is a game of sports, and people get hurt all the time in sports! Look at all the Baseball and Football players who get injured a year! So don't tell me that Wii Sports isn't VIOLENT!
-The Sims may SEEM like playing the life of someone else, but you can play an EVIL & VIOLENT life of someone. You can lock people up in rooms and let them STARVE to death! Or get them to dive into a swimming pool and take away the ladder so they DROWN! And The Sims includes SEX which is related to PORN! Kids play The Sims, so that makes the VIOLENCE and SEX totally unacceptable!
-Mario games are VERY VIOLENT to! It teaches kids to jump on top of turtles! That's ANIMAL ABUSE!
-Pokemon, come on, it's all about ANIMAL ABUSE! Do we want our kids to learn that it's ok to tell Fido to go beat up Fluffy?
-Tetris may LOOK fine, but it's also a bad choice for our kids! Tetris teaches kids to stack lots of objects on top of each other, which causes the ENTIRE stack to eventually collapse right on top of them and injure them! Tetris is VERY DANGEROUS because of the bad physics in it.
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�You need to shut the fuck up when grown folks is talkin�!�
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It's worth a try, anyway.
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Signed,
The Interwebz
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An anti-Leland Yee billboard...
The billboard was up there for a couple of weeks, maybe a month or two. But it's not there now.
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Re: An anti-Leland Yee billboard...
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THAT! .. Just says it all doesn't it ?
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Scapegoats
Now to be just over the top silly put yourself in the role of being on scene when the next killer starts spraying bullets around. What sort of weapon would help you stop the killing without endangering more people yourself? A machine gun isn't it. If you fire large numbers of bullets you too will hit innocents. You need accuracy. Unlikely but you could possibly need to defeat body armor. You positively NEED to use as few bullets as can get the job done.
The point of citizens having guns is self defense so those guns should be made for accuracy and accident resistance, not rate of fire. Banning guns isn't even on the table for discussion. Present proposals are aimed at limiting automatic weapons with large magazines, weapons of war which are poorly suited to self defense.
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First of all automatic weapons are already highly restricted. Second, the number of violent crimes committed by legal gun owners is ridiculously small.
Yes I am embarrassed that the NRA has chosen the cheap route of playing the scapegoating game. But weapon bans will still do nothing but restrict law abiding citizens. The criminals don't care about what the law says they are going to do what they are going to do anyway.
We have for years had an armed populace yet only recently has the frequency of these sorts of tragedies increased. If guns were the cause, then the increase would have happened a long time ago. How about actually addressing the issue of economic imbalance in society that that has sky-rocketed in recent years that could quite possibly be causing certain people to snap under the pressure and resort to drastic violent measures?
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The part where a well regulated militia is essential to the security of a free state. Until the loonies took over the Supreme Court we all understood that to mean the states can have militias, arm their citizens to serve in them and those citizens can retain possession of their guns. That would mean the states can regulate guns any way they please within their borders ranging from outright ban to any military weapon at all.
Of course the words have been tossed to the wind. With suitable irony the robed political hacks who did so are the same who sing the praises of pure textual interpretation of law. We all know the law means whatever they say it means just as Humpty Dumpty taught us so many years ago.
So, with the words of the Constitution trampled in the dust we are left searching for some kind of consensus. The closest we have is that distinction as to "weapons of war". Bans on full blooded machine guns, rockets and other powerful weapons have long been enforced without controversy. We could perhaps follow that working thread and do something rational. Armed citizens defending the free state was the original goal of the second amendment. We can keep that goal realistically recognizing the threat armed citizens can handle is not a foreign army but criminal killers.
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> understood that to mean the states can have militias,
> arm their citizens to serve in them and those citizens
> can retain possession of their guns.
Sure, if you ignore the actual intent by the amendment you might be able to come to that conclusion. The Founders had just finished fighting a war against a government that had tried, among other things, to disarm the populace.
If you think they meant that people should only be able to possess guns with the government's permission, while serving as part of the government, you're nuts.
I also like how enforcing the Constitution as the Framers intended has now apparently become a 'loony' thing to do.
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The right to bear arms goes back to the Glorious Revolution and beyond. There is even mention of the right to defend one's self from a solider in Roman law.
Why are you just making this up?
Why are some more afraid of their neighbors than of an abusive government, seeing how often throughout history abusive government has destroyed the lives of multiple millions, whereas individuals misbehaving simply cannot pull this off?
Serial killers tend not to use guns. The largest mass killers tend to use explosives. Nothing is ever going to prevent the occasional disaster. They are going to happen. These gun laws people seem so desperate to get in place serve absolutely no purpose except to leave decent people defenseless, and yet you will mislead people by pretending to know the history of this amendment in order to promote further violations of its tenets.
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By all means enact laws allowing a free-for-all of weaponry. Why abridge the people's 'right' to tanks, RPGs or ICBMs? And why not throw out every other law that fails to stop people from doing dangerous stuff - you know, like all those pesky drug and speeding laws?
Seriously, watching you guys from the outside is like watching the asylum inmates arguing for bigger padded jackets to stop the guards supposedly pickpocketing you.
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Again, the Constitution's combined statements concerning the requirement of congress to maintain a well ordered militia coupled with the second amendment prohibition of ever infringing the right of the people to keep and bear their own arms is intended to avoid situations such as exist in Syria right at this moment, where the army is the means of control of the nation. Only when part of the army split off was there a revolution. Indeed, that is the heart and soul of the entire so called "Arab Spring". It took massive social pressure, but FINALLY the armies in charge of these places began to splinter, with factions supporting interests besides the existing power structure.
By keeping people armed and intimately involved with the national defense, such issues cannot evolve.
When you act as if these ideas are somehow backwards, anyone who has studied the history behind it all and observes how it is relevant to this very day then sees how out of touch with reality you are.
It doesn't even occur to you that the powers you list are the very powers we rebelled against, and that interference from outside forces was the primary motive for uniting the states to begin with.
You're not being intellectual. You're utterly, painfully, and seemingly stubbornly and willfully uninformed.
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Allow me to elucidate why a weapons ban works. The typical claim goes something like "if you ban weapons, then only criminals have weapons".
We banned fully automatic weapons back in the 80s. How many crimes are committed using fully automatic weapons today?
Practically zero. Why? Because a fully automatic weapon costs tens of thousands of dollars. Supply and demand; if you drastically reduce the supply, the price will skyrocket.
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In Mexico, fully automatic weapons are used in crime constantly despite their far more restrictive gun control laws. The reason cartels don't do that here is because they know the US would invade Columbia and burn their crops if they behaved towards us the way they behave in Mexico.
Being the biggest kid on the block still has SOME fringe benefits.
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It appears to have done so. http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcfullau.html
Since 1934, there have been two known crimes committed with legal fully automatic weapons. I wonder how many crimes have been committed with legal semi-auto weapons in the intervening time (hell, in the last twelve months alone). I'm going to bet that it's higher than two.
Between 1983 and 1992, there were 713 LEOs killed. 651 died by firearms. 4 of them were killed by fully automatic weapons.
In 1980, only 1% of homicides committed in Miami (the "machine gun Mecca" at the time) used fully automatic weapons.
Between 1987 and 1989, Minneapolis police recovered over 2,200 guns. Not a single one was fully automatic.
Between 1980 and 1989, in the Chicago area, 375 guns were seized during drug warrant executions and arrests. Not a single one was fully automatic.
Here, maybe this will make you feel better. 16 of 2,359 guns seized in Detroit between 1991 and 1992 were fully automatic.
Sorry, man. As much as you don't want it to be true, banning fully automatic firearms has resulted in very, very few criminals having them. Supply and demand at work.
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1. Our government would invade whatever nation they were operating from and assassinate their leaders. (See Al Quaeda)
2. People would demand access to automatic weapons and blow the heads off the Cartel operatives themselves.
Mexico proves it is not the ban that is achieving the result. It is our culture. We don't tolerate that level of corruption, or at least, we used to not tolerate it.
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This is why I have absolutely no trust in anyone who is for gun control. I can't even begin to relate to the mind set you would have to have to just dismiss out of hand that a nation who has stricter gun control laws than we do has more gun violence.
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It costs a few moments of a machinists time. That's another aspect of gun control few people want to address. Just how far down the food chain of technology would you like us to ban to prevent simply work-arounds for your myopic bans?
I am so sick of people who have not a single, solitary clue what they are talking about spewing off as if they have moral and intellectual insights about something that has been settled for two hundred plus years.
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For the record, sure, it only takes a few moments of a machinist's time. But have you ever heard "don't let perfect be the enemy of good enough"? You and those like-minded to yourself think that banning weapons doesn't end massacres, so don't ban weapons. But we will NEVER stop massacres and murder. What we can do is MITIGATE the damage. One way to mitigate the damage is to reduce supply. Even if you can just go to a machinist - assuming you can find one who is willing to machine parts for such weapons, which is probably not quite as easy as you think it is - it will still reduce the supply.
After all, why register guns? People can just machine their own. It's so easy to circumvent gun registration, so everyone must be doing it, right? *eyeroll*
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I did not argue that banning things doesn't end up causing them to be less common. Obviously, if something is less common, then it will be less used, whether for good or evil. What I have said is it will not result in any specific increase or decrease in the use of assault weapons for crime, and I have demonstrated that point.
People who are against gun control are not against gun control, as folks like you love to accuse them, because they are backwards luddites who just don't get it. They tend to be people who have at some point in their lives dealt with guns and realize there is nothing magical about them. They are a tool, like a car or a hammer or a nail gun. A culture awash in violence is going to have guns, and those guns are some of them going to be automatics if enough money is involved. We have less of that here because of our culture, not because of your bans.
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We banned drugs back in the 80s. How many crimes are committed because of drugs today?
Practically zero. Why? Because a kilo of coke costs tens of thousands of dollars. Supply and demand; if you drastically reduce the supply, the price will skyrocket.
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Twice?
Three times?
It's not even mildly difficult to find these studies anymore. Let alone the experience of prohibition. And let's not even talk about the prison/industrial complex, by which the US jails more of its population than any other nation we can document and sets them to work as slaves for the same people busy banning everything.
I doubt twelve thousand studies would work. You fear, therefore you ban. Ban everything. Ban technology itself. Let us go back to a simpler time when people merely died at the age of 35 from disease.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Scapegoats
If you meant to reply to me, you missed the fact that I just replaced "weapons" with "drugs" from the post I was replying to. I thought it showed just how silly the argument was. Guess not.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Scapegoats
"Because a kilo of coke costs tens of thousands of dollars. Supply and demand; if you drastically reduce the supply, the price will skyrocket."
Problematically, all the statistics show repeatedly that the crime increased along with the cost of the drugs, and decreased when the prices came down.
Exactly as it did with prohibition.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Scapegoats
I wasn't arguing anything.
I substituted a word for another in original comment to show how absurd the argument was.
Don't preach to the choir.
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D'oh
You're right. I mean, I did read your post but because I misinterpreted the lines it looked like you were responding to me, which made me totally misunderstand.
Blergh. Sorry. Totally my bad.
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Re: D'oh
*I put my cursor on the line and scroll up. Works for me.
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Re: Re: D'oh
Hehe, yeah that's how I finally figured out I had screwed up...
Thanks. Take it easy.
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Re: Re: Re: Scapegoats
You haven't been to a gang-infested neighborhood in L.A. very often, I see.
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Re: Re: Scapegoats
"How about actually addressing the issue of economic imbalance in society that that has sky-rocketed in recent years that could quite possibly be causing certain people to snap under the pressure and resort to drastic violent measures?"
Amen. I do believe you could even find a study or seventy that point out that economic imbalance causes social unrest and violence, not to mention a goodly fistful of historic examples.
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Re: Scapegoats
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Re: Scapegoats
You should love Yee then, he is an anti gun activist as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leland_Yee#Rewriting_of_SB249
While you're at it, can you Cali kids get busy childproofing that San Andreas Fault? THAT thing's gonna cause some problems eventually.
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Re: Scapegoats
Apparently Sen. Feinstein hasn't gotten your memo.
Neither has this video game assemblyman, Yee. The current bill he's pushing would ban *all* semi-automatic handguns in California.
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Re: Scapegoats
Another gun grabber with no clue what he's talking about.
Hint: Automatic firearms are *already* banned (except under certain very limited circumstances). No one's even talking about automatic weapons, except you.
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Hi Minded principles
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Re: Hi Minded principles
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Ticket to Ride: Ao Edition
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Relax Ppl
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it would be like taking the release valve off of a boiler.
Every time the "government" prohibits anything they exacerbate the problem. Alcohol>Mafia Drugs>Cartels
What would the result of of ban on fake violence be?
I'm thinking Real Life Violence.
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Same goes for their knowledge of firearms
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yee
im in saints row.
*whistle*
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These so called representatives need to be held responsible for what they say and do.
http://sd08.senate.ca.gov/
OFFICE LOCATIONS
Capitol Office
State Capitol, Room 4074
Sacramento, CA 95814
Phone: (916) 651-4008
San Francisco Office
455 Golden Gate Avenue,
Suite 14200
San Francisco, CA 94102
Phone: (415) 557-7857
San Mateo Office
400 South El Camino Real,
Suite 630
San Mateo, CA 94402
Phone: (650) 340-8840
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Without guns it's very possible we would not fucking exist freely "if that's what you still want to call it" today..
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ROFL
Hubris.
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Re: ROFL
If the best country you can compare yourself with is Uganda, with its "kill the gays" mentality and actual African mad dictatorships in its relatively recent past, either the US in a really bad way, or you have a very poor perception of yourselves.
And yes, you were the only ones we let go with a bit of a fight. All the others we let go more peacefully. Guess it's only the one violent 'child' we had :) It's a shame you can't grow out of it though...
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Re: Re: ROFL
The UK is no human rights daisy. Never has been. You didn't just let all your children fly free.... That's ridiculous.
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All for the slimy fact of, in this day and age, if you have power and influence in relavant fields, and want rid of something, all you have to do, is repeat somethings evil, enough times, and the majority will form a "gang" behind him, well thats the idea, sometimes, sometimes, you get blowback
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How much is really, truthfully, bad, and how much is what politicians WANT it to be bad
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funny I can use the guns in call of duty cause movies taught me how.
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Boys will be boys. Quite trying to wussify the nation by turning it into a nanny state.
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A different take
The open corruption within the politics of the USA raises this as a strong possibility in my mind.
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How do people even get to be that egotistical?
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You have to be a sociopath to want to seek power.
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Putting a lid on greed is a moral imperative. In recent decades, morality itself seems to have come under increasing fire though, and as we abandon all sorts of ancient concepts to do with social expectations, greed seems to have fallen by the wayside as well.
Here's an interesting little blurb about the concept of a leader being "open handed" in older days.
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http://maplight.org/california/legislator/1361-leland-yee
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all of this is a distraction
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I object!
I couldn't find the blasted X button, so after one clip I wasn't able to reload.Then after the clip was empty I couldn't find the blasted Y button so I could switch to another weapon!
The only thing that was the same in fact, was that after the first clip was empty, I was offered the option to pay to get another full clip, so apparently DLC is alive and well in both the digital and physical worlds of shooting things.
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done with anything he has to say.
.....ever.....
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how to get techdirt all riled up
OMG they're coming for our video games!
The only thing this is missing is "OMG they're coming for our free music!" Maybe they can include that one next time for the trifecta.
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1) Fantastical, glorified violence.
2) Real, shocking violence.
Somehow, no matter if in games, film, art or books, we manage to separate the two. The first is found entertaining by most people, the latter is horrifying.
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no cred
OBJECTION!
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HITLER.
Coincidence...?
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Bridge, I bet. Bridge should definitely be banned.
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Credibility?
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how about a study on the effects of government-sanctioned violence?
years to decades of incarceration without a trial
assassination of U.S. citizens without a trial
assassination squads in ally countries
drone strikes on civilian women and children
assault gun sales to drug lords
material food aid to enemy countries so they can allocate resources to militarization instead of feeding their own people
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Re: how about a study on the effects of government-sanctioned violence?
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Violent cards
I played all kinds of games including solitaire, but with a Analog deck of cards so I had to reload manually.
So every now and again I play a game of solitaire on the computer and put it on FULL AUTO just for the excitement of it! Some people around me have been bored to death!
Clearly games are dangerous.
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Gaming
At the same time, extremist positions "for" are just as much of a turn-off as extremist positions "against".
Guns, games, cars, airplanes ... I could go on and on ... can be good, bad, or indeterminate. I personally prefer games (any games) to guns, but that's just me. However, we need REASONED discussion, as in, "Yes, there are pros and cons", not childish "is - is not - is - is not".
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Emperer Leland Yee
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