Supreme Court Says Banning the Sale of Violent Video Games is Unconstitutional

The Supreme Court finished their current session yesterday, and one of the decisions they made is not only another victory for free speech, it's a victory for the video game industry.

The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that states cannot ban the sale of violent video games to minors. In a 7 - 2 vote, the high court threw out a 2005 California law that banned selling and renting violent video games to people under 18. The judges called the law unconstitutional and a violation of the 1st Amendment's free speech rights.

This is good news for gamers like me, but did we really need to bother the Supreme Court with this? There's already a system in place to keep kids from buying those violent games. It's called the ESRB. I've talked about this before. If a game is rated "Mature" or "M" (and most of these games are), then retailers are not permitted to sell them to anyone without a valid ID.

Now, that being said, how do you suppose these games are ending up in kids' hands? Are they making fake IDs to get the games? No. Stealing their parents' IDs? No. Going over to a friend's house to play them? Maybe, but even those kids had to get those games somewhere. It's the parents who are buying these games for their kids, the parents who don't even bother looking at what they're buying, and then they get all offended and up in arms when they see just how violent these games are. But they don't blame themselves, they blame the game industry and then run and get the government involved.

Parents, the government will not raise your kids for you. I've said it once, and I'll say it again. If you don't want your children to play violent video games, then stop buying them!

It's not that hard.