In a great Pajamas Media piece, Andrew Ian Dodge takes a look at the mentality of the people who are going after video games:

Politicians are always looking for an edge to be seen to be doing something; especially if it involves children. Never is it more likely that during an election year or the lead up to a general election. Politicians all over the Anglosphere are eyeing the video game industry with ill intent.

US government leaders examining slapping extra taxes on game transactions, justified by the supposed link between video games with violent behavior - which also bolsters the cries for censorship. The latter is occuring despite the fact there is evidence that video games do not lend themselves to encouraging bad behavior. There is a recent study shows that video game paranoids are completely off base.

Surprisingly, for some, it seems that its not violent games that make children violent, but the dysfunctional family they live in. Just like with the recent spate of college shootings; it seems that sick violent people when allowed to roam free act out on their proclivities.

I have noticed that the mentality which wants to go after physical things (whether video games or guns) seems to overlap with a mindset which is very much against holding criminals accountable for their actions. In fact, I have yet to meet someone who is soft on criminals who isn't also ferociously anti-gun.

Philadelphia Mayor Nutter, for example, not only blamed the gun the criminals used to shoot Sgt. Liczbinski, he blamed the NRA, claiming that "they" (not the judges and parole board members who let these dangerous criminals loose) owed the officer's family an apology. And when police captured the fugitive shooting suspect Eric DeShawn Floyd, Mayor Nutter (who called the NRA "insane") said he was "disappointed" in him.

Nutter had just left dinner at a Center City restaurant with city Commerce Director Andrew Altman when he learned of Floyd's arrest.

He stopped briefly at City Hall, then went to Police Headquarters, where the police van carrying Floyd had arrived.

"I looked him dead in his eye," Nutter said later, "and said, 'I'm disappointed in you.'

"I had to look in the face of a guy who would do something like that, and, quite frankly, as one African American male to another, just tell him how disappointed I was in what he had done."

But if we look at root causes, wasn't Manson driven to do what he did by the Beatles White Album? Had that record not been irresponsibly turned loose on the market, Sharon Tate, her friends, and the LaBiancas would all be alive today.

And aren't the same companies which made millions off the vinyl records which drove the Manson murders now making millions off violent video games?

Something has to be done.

About things, not criminals.