Don’t Bring a Video Game to a Gun Fight

In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook and Gabrielle Giffords’ shooting stories (and hundreds others), the National Rifle Association and other gun proponents have argued that video games are a contributing factor — if not the reason — for gun violence in the United States.  It was suggested by the NRA that the Center for Disease Control undertake a study to detect a connection.  mario

We have, however, a long history of blaming entertainment for societal ills… even to the point of Congressional hearings on the comic book.

Moreover, as a legal issue, we’ve been down this road quite recently — the 2011 US Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Entertainment, which discussed these very issues at length as well as the “evidence” surrounding a connection between games and guns.

The article, Don’t Bring a Video Game to a Gun Fight, discusses these issues in the March 2013 Palm Beach Bar Bulletin.

The discussion continues and we could probably clean up much of society in a number of ways to fix gun violence.  Re-read Brown and see how you feel about spending time and money on video games (and whether laws regulating video games are worth the effort).

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