Rhode Island Legislator Proposes A Tax On Video Games Based On Existing Entirely Voluntary Ratings System

Violent video games may not cause violent people, despite what some people think, but we can certainly point out that they make a certain class of people very, very stupid. That class is the political class. Every time some violent happening occurs in America, the reaction by grandstanding politicians with no imagination is to lash out at video games for causing all the world"s violence, to propose such games be banned entirely, or to propose a tax on them. On the question of taxing or banning these games, these politicians fortunately run face-first into the First Amendment and the Supreme Court"s 2011 decision that video games are art, they are speech, and the government can"t infringe upon that speech.