from AP
The U.S. Supreme Court recently heard arguments over whether or not to ban minors from buying or renting violent video games.
According to press reports, the reaction from the justices was mixed, with the reactions not holding to the normal dividing lines between them on most legal questions.
The case relates to a 2005 California law that outlaws selling excessively violent video games to minors. It was signed, as some ironically noted, by a former actor renowned for his violent films, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. After being struck down by lower courts the battle over the law has now reached the Supreme Court.
Questions from the bench ranged from why video games should be singled out for special treatment as opposed to violence in comics or rap music, to whether they could even be considered as a form of art, the Wall Street Journal reported Nov. 3.
“We do not have a tradition in this country of telling children they should watch people actively hitting schoolgirls over the head with a shovel so they’ll beg with mercy, being merciless and decapitating them, shooting people in the leg so they fall down,” Chief Justice John Roberts said, according to a Nov. 2 report by the Associated Press.
By contrast, Justice Antonin Scalia said: “I am concerned with the First Amendment, which says Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech.” He then added: “It has never been understood that the freedom of speech did not include portrayals of violence. You are asking us to create a whole new prohibition which the American people never ratified when they ratified the First Amendment.”
Courts in six other states have struck down similar bans.
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