I don’t know why it is that the anti-free-speech crowd insists on fighting the same battle, over and over again, regardless of the fact that they’ve lost it, every single time.

And what do you know, it’s the same group of people who are obsessed with the idea of entertainment media as influence, and are intent on reining it in when they perceive that it might influence people in a way they don’t like.

Chicago lawmaker Marcus C. Evans Jr. has called for a ban on games like Grand Theft Auto in light of an increase in carjackings in the city of Chicago. In Chicago, carjackings have increased 135% last year.

You know what else happened last year? The government lockdowns over COVID. Did it occur to Evans that when people lost their jobs in great numbers, they might turn to crime to make ends meet? Because there’s a lot of precedent for it. When manufacturing left Camden, it wasn’t a pretty sight.

Evans also seems unaware that a lot has happened since the nineties. Video games have long-since gone mainstream, and there are no longer as many people who misunderstand video games, whose ignorance he can prey upon.

What year is it that politicians are trying to ban, *checks notes* Grand Theft Auto?! Like, genuinely, what year does this state politician think this is?! It’s like Tipper Gore going after Mortal Kombat.

— Christina Warren (@film_girl) February 23, 2021

Or there’s his own ignorance of the studies that found that video games don’t cause violent behavior.

Considering all that must be overlooked in order for Marcus to arrive at his non-sequitor, one would wonder whether there’s an ulterior motive, or if he’s really that ignorant.

As things are, the United States protects expression as a right. Because of this, efforts to snipe video games have never worked. Considering the relative lack of the number of people who view video games as “weird” or “strange” (as compared to the nineties), it’s unlikely that any legislation targeting them would get very far.

Because it’s axiomatic at this point, it doesn’t seem like it needs to be said, but some people are so far behind that they’d be surprised to learn it: people don’t play GTA to learn to steal cars, they play it because it’s escapism.

Normal people are aware that most video games are fantasy, and with the exception of educational games, aren’t intended to inform a person’s perspective of reality. Most abnormal people are aware of this, too. In the rare case that a person acts out what they see in a video game, the game itself is not held accountable, it being an object without agency, intended for entertainment.

It’s so obvious, that when a lawmaker proposes a ban on certain video games, I wonder what’s really going on. Could a Chicago lawmaker be do dense that he has no idea that mass unemployment due to government lockdowns is the cause of a spike in automobile thefts?

Or is it about control? With these kinds, it usually is.