Sometimes, good taste doesn’t require much debate. So it was when Andrew and Tracey Hyams of Newton walked into the Charlton rest stop on the Massachusetts Turnpike on Christmas Eve — 10 days after the school massacre in Newtown, Conn. — and were disturbed to hear sounds of machine gun fire rat-a-tatting from the speakers of a video game. A complaint, e-mailed to the state Department of Transportation, led to swift action from state bureaucrats: Nine realistically violent video games were pulled out of four service plazas.
This move is only symbolic. Removing video games from rest stops is not going to end this nation’s scourge of violence, it’s not going to solve any issues of gun control or mental health, and it will probably irk some upstanding kids who want a particular sort of escape from monotonous road trips. Still, it’s nice to see officials showing good judgment. The value of playing violent video games at home (or on handheld devices, with headphones) is worthy of a measured and reasonable public discussion. But there’s no reason everyone who passes through a rest stop bathroom needs to be treated to the sound of shooting guns. In public places, Ms. Pac-Man will probably do.
Comments
Gun games are a red herring. They've been around as long as people and have historically proven to be of no effect.
A better solution would be to ban rest stops.
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Nope, Ms Pac Man will not do, it is demeaning to women to depict them as cannibalistic creatures. My lovely wife has always been offended by the game, can we look forward to those extremely offensive games being removed anytime soon?
Seriously, we need a MEASURED and REASONABLE discussion? Wait, we did not get a chance to have one of those, did we? Why am I not surprised, that is typical operating procedure in this state when it comes to anything remotely gun related. Like even games with no bullets in them.
Let's hope these people don't go to the movies, since every theatre I go to has many shooting games. Why is that? They are money makers! Shooting games like they talk about in this article are designed to slowly wear the player down while you need to produce maximum destruction which requires more coins every 5 to 10 minutes.
Seriously though, rest stops are not the place where the people responsible for these mass shootings are learning their destructive behaviors, its due to poor security around guns for people around those who have mental illnesses and are not deemed credible threats until its too late. Or are deemed as threats, but the mental health system won't respond. I'm not a gun advocate but I also don't think you can always blame the tool.