Supreme Court overturns California ban on violent video game sales or rental to kids

99% of retailers have policies in place that prevent mature games/movies from being sold to kids. The register will prompt "Is customer over the age of 17? MM/DD/YYYY?"

If the ban would have been upheld, it would have been much more costly for retailers to carry mature-themed games due to fines if policy wasn't followed. This could also limit the amount of retailers which carry M-rated games, which would hurt publishers.

reply to post by nixie_nox


Though it pains me to agree with Justice Scalia, I do. This isn't a matter for government. We need the government OUT of our personal lives, not more involved in them.

Originally posted by Undertough

Originally posted by Terrormaster
Bottom line is we police our own kids. Parents who are insisting that this sort policing should be legislated are lazy parents period - sorry a spade is a spade and I call it like I see it.

You need to open your eyes. Some of us do not have kids but we are sick of living in a society full of juvenile delinquents because there are lazy parents. I should not have to pay for the sins of the same people you want to knock as if people like me do not exist. I doubt you enjoy putting up with children that come from parents that care not to raise them. I get sick of them breaking into my car, personally. But the bottom line should be states rights. As long as the SC does not want CA to stop kids from buying Duke Nukem forever then I do not see how they can allow age restrictions on Playboy Magazine, R rated movies, etc.

Read the rest of my post. There have been many studies done that have shown that violent video games and movies do NOT turn children into juvenile delinquents. Just because a form of entertainment glamorizes it doesn't mean it's automatically making kids go out and do bad things. Delinquents existed before violent movies and video games and will exist long after. Sometimes they're just bad apples others are a product of their environment growing up in bad neighborhoods.

Violent games DOES NOT EQUAL violent kids. The two are completely unrelated. It's the MSM that's spinning it negatively when some parent doesn't want to accept responsibility for their kids or accept their kids actually did something bad (we all like to think our kids are angels) so they externalize it and blame it on something popular. "Oh they would have never thought to do that on their own. I didn't teach them that. They must have seen it in a movie or a video game." After digging they see the kid had a video game habit. So the media places blame elsewhere when the real source is anything but. These kids often turn to movies and video games as escapism from their real life problems. These particular kids had issue to begin with. Anyone (kid or adult) who has trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality have no business seeking out these forms of entertainment. But in the end the game or movie didn't cause the problem when the person had issues to start.

We don't need a nanny state legislating how we raise our kids because someone else doesn't like how they're turning out.

reply to post by Terrormaster


That is why I was trying to say that it is not the video games or the music, but the absentee parents. I am going to date myself here and bring up the parent who tried to sue Ozzy Osbourne because their teen listened to him for 15 hours and then committed suicide. I can tell you after 2 hours I would of gone in my teen's room and locked him out of the house to get some son. Why would the parent let him listen to OO for 15 hours??

Originally posted by FortAnthem

This decision is a blow against parental rights to decide how their children are to be raised and what they are allowed to be exposed to.

So you're saying that because of this law being overturned, you'll let your kids (if you have any) run riot and claim "a judge let them"?

X-Men: First Class is a 12A in the UK, meaning kids can go see it but younger ones should be accompanied by an adult (although those aged 11 and under usually go with parents anyway to the cinema) but had the F word in one scene.

Ratings are there for a reason. Outright banning everything in sight because of the "won't somebody think of the children" stance brings in a nanny state that dictates what we can and can't watch.

My sister is 16 yet has seen some 18 rated horror movies on tv even though our mother doesn't like even me at 27 years old watch those kinds of movies. The only lazy parenting in our household was by our dad yet he's never been around to actually parent anyway, if people underage wanna see something then they'll always find a way to do it.

If they wanna stream movies online to get around the age rating, do you want the internet controlled and people clamping down on what we as adults view just because somebody's afraid little Suzy will see a penis or an image from a horror movie? (I'd question why a parent with kids of that age wouldn't have parental blocks or passwords on their computers anyway to prevent that)

You know how my brother's friends in college bought 18 rated videogames like Call Of Duty and Red Dead Redemption? Got a friend who was 18 to buy it for him. Should we photo ID everyone who buys a game, follow them with Big Brother style technology and if they hand it to somebody one day away from their 18th birthday, arrest them and throw them into a detention camp?

The buck has to stop somewhere and while I have no kids of my own and never want any and am also sick of unruly kids with lazy parents who let them do whatever they like, I also know as somebody under the age of 40 and still in touch with reality that the judge's overturning of the ban is correct and that government should NOT be in charge of dictating what we can and can't do.

It's up to the parents and the people working in stores. I once worked in a place where a cashier got suspended for selling a knife to somebody under the age of 16 even though this person looked older than that according to her defense. That's another factor in why an outright ban is stupid because some underage look older than they are and others who are above the legal limit are turned away because they look younger than they actually are.

Originally posted by nixie_nox
reply to post by Terrormaster

 

That is why I was trying to say that it is not the video games or the music, but the absentee parents. I am going to date myself here and bring up the parent who tried to sue Ozzy Osbourne because their teen listened to him for 15 hours and then committed suicide. I can tell you after 2 hours I would of gone in my teen's room and locked him out of the house to get some son. Why would the parent let him listen to OO for 15 hours??

I'm a huge fan of Ozzy myself but even I'll admit, listening to the same songs for 15 hours over and over is way too much. Although I don't know of that case, just from your description it sounds to me like he suffered depression anyway, hid it from his family, listened to music to try and help cope with it and then eventually hours later even that didn't help so he killed himself and the parent decided to make a quick buck.

I think this ruling may have some connection to the video game sales slump that is hitting just about every retailer.

I doubt it will have any effect. Prices and playability and market saturation are more to blame...

Kids should be allowed to vote at birth.

It's not for the government to decide how old someone has to be to vote.

This in an infringement on individual rights.

Originally posted by FortAnthem

These laws were put in place to aid good responsible parents who don't want their kids exposed to these things. If you take away the laws, then kids can go behind their parent's backs to buy inappropriate games which the parents would never approve of. The only kids who were getting their hands on these games before were the kids whose parents didn't care what games their kids were playing because they had to get their parents to buy the games for them under the old law. Now anybody's kid can walk into a store and buy whatever game they want without their parents knowledge of approval.

This decision is a blow against parental rights to decide how their children are to be raised and what they are allowed to be exposed to.

This is the whole problem in a nutshell. If your kids are going behind your back because you wont let them play a game, then you have not raised them right. If you cant be open and honest with your children and have frank discussions about what is/is not appropriate for them then you are not doing your job. If your children think that its ok to go behind your back and do whatever they want, then you are not doing your job. If you can not be an active participant in your child's life and give them the ability to make an informed decision on what they are/are not able to handle at their age, then you are not doing your job.

And, one more time, if you can not give your children the ability to evaluate what is "allowed" for them, then you are not doing your job.

And to the people who are "sick and tired" of delinquents "breaking into their car," maybe you should put a little more effort into taking care of yourself and your possessions, instead of worrying about whose a bad parent because they "allow" their children to play a videogame.

Stop blaming everybody else, its called "personal responsibility" and in my opinion, its the biggest problem with our country today.

Originally posted by des9996
Stop blaming everybody else, its called "personal responsibility" and in my opinion, its the biggest problem with our country today.

I assume you also live in the US? Because I'd have to disagree with it being the biggest problem in your country, I'd say it's the biggest problem in the world.

2nd