Violent games bill thrown out by Oklahoma subcommittee
Proposed tax on violent games loses due to tenuous links to obesity and bullying
A bill that would have imposed a one per cent tax on the sale of violent video games in the state of Oklahoma has been rejected, Eurogamer reports.
The bill lost a subcommittee vote by a narrow margin of 5-6, largely due to concerns over a founding premise that linked video games to bullying and obesity among children.
The legislation was introduced by state representative William Fourkiller earlier this month, and would have applied to any game rated Teen, Mature or Adult Only by the ESRB. However, while that would encompass a number of 'violent' games, it would also include products like Zumba Fitness 2 and Dance Central.
Half of all the money recouped from the tax would have been donated to the Childhood Outdoor Education Revolving Fund - a charity dedicated to "outdoor education initiatives." The other half would have been donated to the Bullying Prevention Revolving Fund.
According to the subcommittee minutes, representative Mike Reyonolds questioned what Fourkiller hoped to accomplish with the bill, and representative Pat Ownbey placed the issue of childhood obesity in a broader context.
"Why just video games? Why not French fries or rap music or movies?" Ownbey asked. Fourkiller acknowledged that there was no "magic bullet" solution to such issues, but the bill represented a way to raise awareness.
"It's not a good idea," Reynolds added. "We could have a task force on a multitude of reasons children are obese. Why we're picking violent video games was because it was originally a tax."
Parents should be the ones to decide whether their kids can play games, not the government.
The hoax of a bill trying to change the value of PI wouldn't exist at all if there weren't any absurd like this one. ;-)
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Pablo Santos on 27th February 2012 5:02pm
In fact, most of these bills are proposed and written by Democrats. The California bill that was struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court was authored by by California State Senator Leland Yee - who represents District 8 (the western half of San Francisco, California), he also is running for mayor of San Francisco.
Early in the 90s when Mortal Kombat came out and some people started to question video game violence then-Democrat (now independent as he lost the Democratic primary, but won the general election) Senator Joe Liberman was the leader to push for bans and censorship.
[link url=http://lieberman.senate.gov/index.cfm/news-events/news/2002/12/lieberman-says-kids-still-vulnerable-to-violent-video-games-calls-for-new-hearings-on-kids-access-to-adult-materials
]http://lieberman.senate.gov/index.cfm/ne...[/link]
I know it is popular for the liberal media to bash and say conservative, but the "Nanny State" of letting government dictate everything is the bastion of the left, including this amazing gem from Chicago, in which the school bans kids from bringing lunch from home requiring them to buy the oh so amazingly healthy school chicken nuggets deep fried in oil:
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-...
We tend to be quick on the draw against the conservative right when we think of legislation such as this but it's actually the liberal left that does most of the major proposals and restrictions.
But that's par for the hypocritical course for politics here in the US.
I'm happy to see that this has been shot down. However the growing number of proposals for legislation is rather concerning. It seems even in the UK that, despite the Byron review, we're not really any closer to resolving these ill-formed attitudes.