Grand Theft of Rights: Capital City

What's up with DFL Senator Sandy Pappas? Not only is she carrying the gambling-expansion proposal heavily lobbied for by Governor Pawlenty, but she is also trying to criminalize video games. She's by no means the only person who believes that violent video games are evil incarnate and should be banned from the face of the Earth, but she is pushing a bill to make it a crime for kids to rent or purchase mature- or adult-rated video games.

I don't play these kind of FPS games, but I do know enough to see the rank hypocrisy in criminalizing renting a video game while allowing a child to see an R-rated movie with a parent. If parents don't want their kids to play violent video games, then they should make sure their kids don't play violent video games by paying attention to what they are doing. There's something to be said for parental responsibility, after all. Not only that, but laws like the one she is proposing have been found to be unconstitutional. This doesn't daunt her; in the article, she says, "Who says children have First Amendment rights?" I wonder if she would argue that the Bloomington Kennedy High School students who were protesting the Iraq war last month didn't have First Amendment rights? I certainly hope not, which would make her a bit of a hypocrite.

Kids should absolutely not be playing video games for adults; that much is certain. However, making criminal out of kids is definitely not the way to solve this problem.