Why banning violent games won’t matter

Germany

Bettina Gaus

Die Tageszeitung

Video games don't kill people; people kill people, said Bettina Gaus in Berlin's Die Tageszeitung. Yet after a tragic school shooting in northern Germany last month, politicians seeking someone to scapegoat have turned to the makers of violent video games. The shooter, an 18-year-old, stormed his former high school and wounded five people before killing himself with a sawed-off shotgun. Once news came out that the youth had been a fanatical player of the shoot-'em-up game CounterStrike, politicians in two German states scrambled to draft laws banning any game that depicts "cruel violence on humans or human-looking characters." Obviously, these middle-aged legislators "have never been on the Internet." If they had, they'd realize that trying to ban online content is as futile as "trying to ban earthquakes, or bad taste." Such censorship is probably impossible—but in any case, it's undesirable. It's like banning kitchen knives because someone once used one to kill his wife. "Most kitchen knives are dangerous only to onions." And most games influence kids only to neglect their homework.

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