The State of California wants to enact AB 1179, a bill that would essentially make it illegal to sell or rent “violent” video games to minors. Because violent video games (allegedly) cause “psychological harm”, reduce frontal lobe activity, and incite feelings of “aggression” (see AB 1179 (1)), the California legislature has determined that it has a compelling interest in restricting the flow of these games. In defining a violent video game, California looks to a bevy of factors, including whether or not a “reasonable person” would find that the game appeals to the “deviant or morbid interests of minors” and whether or not “as a whole, [the game] lack[s] serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value”. Those caught selling/renting titles defined as such can be fined up to $1,000.
The question is, of course, is this legal or constitutional? Hell no.
First off, if you read AB 1179, you will notice that the California legislature fails to prove (or even attempt to prove) that violent video games cause psychological harm or incite feelings of aggression. There is no definitive evidence proving a connection between video games and aggression, let alone video games and “psychological harm”. There is plenty of evidence on both sides, but problems are rife, and nothing is certain. The California legislature, in this bill, simply states this connection as a fact, with absolutely no precedent or reasoning behind it.
To put this in different terms, it would be as if the California legislature said in a bill that they determined a connection between reading The Catcher in the Rye and killing people, so they decided to ban the book entirely. There are certainly people who have claimed the book made them kill people, but that doesn’t make the connection anything close to believable, and there’s certainly no definitive scientific proof to back up this assertion either. No matter what the connection or the topic, legislative power is not the power to determine fact in the absence of proof. It certainly doesn’t allow you to restrict free speech in the absence of legitimate reason.
Second off, the bill itself is far too vague to be administratively feasible. Who is going to decide if a video game appeals to “deviant or morbid interests”? Who determines if a title has “literary, artistic, political, or scientific” merit? How in the world would you even begin to devise a rubric to make aesthetic judgments like this? Even worse, since when does the government legislate based upon brain activity?
You know, because violence and video games are directly connected.
Consider, for example, the game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Is it violent? Absolutely, you shoot hundreds of people. However, is purely for “deviant or morbid interests” and devoid of “political merit”? That’s hard to decide. The game is violent, but it also makes a point regarding warfare and politics. There’s a particularly harrowing scene in the game, for example, where you play a soldier dying in the impact of a nuclear blast. That’s powerful stuff, and fairly gruesome/violent — but would that be considered “morbid”? In an incredibly infamous episode in the game’s sequel, you play alongside a team of Russian terrorists who massacre innocent civilians in an airport. The point of this scene is not violence for its own sake, but to shock and unsettle the player and to make them realize the gravity and inhumanity of terrorism. Is this scene for “deviant interests”? Does it even matter that in either of these games the frontal lobe of the brain may remain relatively inactive?
But let me come clean here: I have a personal reason for hating this bill. I’ve been playing video games as long as I can remember. One of my first memories involves playing a video game, and there has never been a part of my life since then when I was not playing video games. I played them as a preteen in Germany, as a teenager in my parents basement, as an undergraduate crammed into a small room in Japan, and I continue to do so today as a law student. Video games helped me learn to read, to think, to relax, and to enjoy myself. I was not restricted to playing innocent games, either — in my childhood, I played some games that are now, to the best of my knowledge, banned from the entire U.S. due to being incredibly violent/sexual/whatever.
The thing is, video games didn’t “ruin” me. My frontal lobe works just fine, and I’m not a raving murderous lunatic, though I’ve played games where I played a raving mad raping murderous lunatic. Considering millions of people play video games every day without turning into psychotic killers, we can presume that there are a lot of people like me. Video games are simply methods of entertainment — I do not see how they can be so easily used as an excuse for deviant behavior.
There certainly may be a good interest in keeping minors away from violent and pornographic material — but that’s mainly up to parents, not up to legislators. State government is not tasked with being a parent of every single child in California, determining what is “good” and “bad” for them on an entirely arbitrary scale. This bill needs to be ceremonially burned, not passed.
Tags: california, California AB 1179, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Constitutional Law, free speech, law, media, Schwarzenegger vs. EMA, Violence in Video Games, Violent Video Games
