Election year anti-video game hysteria continues! If Boston’s mayor, Thomas Menino, gets his way, video games with an M rating will be labeled as pornography. This will then allow the state of Massachusetts to restrict the sales of M rated games.

So why would Boston want to put Call of Duty 4 on the same level as Hustler and Playboy? To protect the children, naturally. To quote Mayor Menino’s Chief of Human Services, Larry Mayes:

“Children aged 17 and under should not be sold this stuff, so they are not getting into the hands of nine and ten year olds.”

By my count, this will be the tenth attempt at trying to get M-rated video games banned. Also by my count, previous attempts are a combined 0-for-9, with them either bing shot down immediately or being overturned by a judge not-too-long afterwards. Each and every time the laws were labeled as “unconstitutional”. But let’s move past the obvious unconstitutionality of this for just a moment and focus on an interesting choice of words that Mr. Mayes had used.

“Children aged 17 and under” should not be sold violent video games? Considering that at 17 you are legally able to serve in the United States Military (an institution solely dedicated to the extermination of people waving different flags than your own), this makes absolutely no sense. At age 16 we entrust you to be able to properly operate a 3,000lb hunk of steel that is propelled using a highly flammable petrol fluid.

Finally, as I have said more times than I care to count, if you as a parent cannot take the ten seconds out of your shopping experience to LOOK IN THE LOWER LEFT CORNER to see that big, BOLD rating symbol looking you dead in the face, then you fail as a parent. Period.

via Boston Herald

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