Don’t Bring a Video Game to a Gun Fight
- By : Cbh
- Category : law & order, SCOTUS
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.
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).