Past Opinion Articles

Article for the week of 5/31/07

Virtual Gun Control
By, Cozmic

Following yet more tragic events that get blamed on vidoegames by fanatic madmen, congress is now discussing passing a law that limits the use of virtual guns at arcades. This is beleived to highly restrict the amount of virtual guns not aimed at the screen and firing their little beams of light or whatever at something that isn't a zombie or terrorist or some sort of strange mix of the two. Or perhaps an alien, although lately aliens seem to be slightly out of style.
The law is proposed to force people to have a valid gun license to even approach arcade cabinets such as Virtua Cop, House of the Dead, and Time Crisis, and any fooling around with the gun will lead to a fine of $200, all payed in quarters. Games that let you handle larger weapons, such as L.A Machine Guns, will be banned from arcades altogether, to be replaced with yet more Dance Dance Revolution machines, while Konami's Silent Scope series is to be kept behind locked doors only accessible by bribing the security guards stationed out front. Everyone knows rich people don't become mass murderers, so this is a perfectly acceptable solution.
The fcat that this makes it harder to use a fake gun in an arcade game than a real one does not seem to bother congress, who have, hook, line and sinker, swallowed the notion that violent video games are the sole reason mass-murderers exist.
The fact that arcades are a dying breed outside of Japan doesn't seem to have mattered at all, it is at the arcades that the most ”real guns” exist. Everyone knows that guns are best reloaded by shooting outside of the screen, it is a time-honored fact which might now also be honored with a hefty fine. Never mind the lack of sensible recoil and the like, shooting a bunch of plastic at a screen is as real as you will ever get to murdering someone without actually extinguishing human life, that giant arachnid thing is obviously meant to be practice for shooting a real human, and not just a way to live through your own personal horror film.
True to his zealous antics, Jack Thompson has already issued a statement that “this is not enough, this will not stop our kids from killing each other, Rockstar are still allowed to release games, Tetris is available as a flash game and kids will learn to run one another over with cars using Sega Rally.” When asked how Tetris was dangerous, the lawyer relied, frothing at the mouth “burn them, burn them all! All video games must die! They're evil, I tell you! Evil!”