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Bill targets access to
By Treena Shapiro
violent video games
Star-BulletinIn the video game "Duke Nukem: Time to Kill," players maneuver Duke into the strip club Bootylicious to gun down gun-wielding pigs with LAPD emblazoned across their chests.
At a Planning and Public Safety Committee meeting yesterday, City Councilman Andy Mirikitani used the game as an example of excessively violent video games "readily available to preteens."
In games like this, "police and established authority are the bad guys," he said.
A bill would regulate Honolulu preteens' access to such an "inappropriately violent interactive electronic game" by prohibiting rental, sales, or access to coin-operated games by children 12 and under.
The law would require businesses to display the video game-rating system, require official identification of those who buy or rent the games, keep violent video games in a segregated area near the entrance of the business, and outfit the games with disabling devices which would prevent children from playing the games without assistance from employees.
Games targeted by the bill include those with violence, blood, gore and death.
"The Council finds that this ordinance is necessary to achieve the compelling interest of preventing the breakdown of a preteen's inhibition to kill or perform other violent acts upon another human individual," the bill's second draft reads.
Three people offered testimony in support of the bill, connecting video-game violence to school shootings and unprovoked violent attacks.
Seven-year-old Jacob Frazzar summed up the sentiment of the testimony: "Violent videos teach us to shoot with guns and cut with knives and beat up people."
"That sometimes makes you want to fight or kill," he said. "Killing is bad."
Discussion on the bill was deferred to the next committee meeting.
City & County of Honolulu
