In recent months we’ve had many in the US try to blame violence amongst the youth of today on video games that contain violence of one kind or another. The poster child of this campaign being the Grand Theft Auto series. We see senators such as Hillary Roddam-Clinton and, just recently, Sam Brownback try to get laws past through Congress and the Senate that would make violent video games, if not illegal entirely, as good as illicit to any persons under the age of 18. All this while the disgraced Jack Thompson wanders around the various US states trying to get them to pass unconstitutional laws, all because he has a beef with Take Two.

Take Two are the publishers of games such as Grand Theft Auto, Manhunt and Bully and so on. But they are also publishers of games such as official NBA and NHL sporting games, Prey, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Dungeon Siege 2, most of Sid Meier’s games and not forgetting the Dora the Explorer games.

Of course, Jack Thompson in his ever escalating grudge against Take Two (and other publishers) seems to over look all the many good games that are available to concentrate on a few that can be called “violent.”

However, the argument extends that video games are art, they are a free expression of the viewpoint of those that produce the game and that the publisher is providing the same service to game developers that a news paper or magazine is when they publish letters to the editor and so on. Sure, the economies are vastly different, however free speech and the expression of opinion and belief is held to be a right that cannot be trod on by another in the US, no matter how much someone might want to.

In the 1980s, there was a similar fight over the lyrics of popular music. Frank Zapper proved to be an absolute champion in this regard and much of what he said when faced with attempts to censor music in the 1980s now applies with recent attempts to not only censor, but in some cases ban completely, video games.

However, the problem we face today, while similar, is inherently different because now the medium in question not just corrupting the minds of todays youth, it is apparently driving them to commit atrocious and egregious acts of violence.

School shootings are becoming more and more noticeable. Not so much because there are more of them, but because they are now making more headlines. Since the tragedy of Columbine in Colorado, the profile of school shootings has increased dramatically. Whether someone does end up dead or not is beside the point. Just having a gun in a school is enough to get the press sniffing around now.

A kid goes on a rampage in a mall and the first thing people do is say “Oh, he must’ve played violent video games.” This is before anyone even knows his name, let alone his history. There now exists a stigma associated with playing video games. Once upon a time, hackers were nerdy teenagers living dark and solitary lives in their parents basements with no friends or social interaction. Now any kid that pulls out a gun must have been driven to do it because of violent video games.

Gang violence in New Zealand is now at an all time high. There are places within Auckland (and other parts of the country) that the police simply refuse to go because they fear for their own safety. Areas in which gangs rule the streets.

In the first two weeks January of 2007, there were more than 7 high profile murders across New Zealand. I say high profile because those were just the ones that were discussed in the media. How many more were dealt with quietly?

Bailey Junior Kurariki is a convicted murder. In 2001, at the age of just 12, he and his friends had a pizza delivered to an address, then mugged the delivery man and in the process killed him. All for a few dollars in change. He has twice been denied parole because he is considered too dangerous to return to society. However his sentence is over and done with in September of 2008. At that time, he will be released from prison and returned into society.

If he is still considered too dangerous to release on Parole in January of 2007, 5+ years after his conviction, how can we possibly be assured he will be safe when he has finished the sentence for his crime? This kid has a great future in any gang of his choice. What gang wouldn’t want a kid who shows no remorse at all for killing another person for no reason?

In July of 2006, Ngatai Rewiti was pleaded guilty of manslaughter after he deliberately threw a rock off an overpass and through the windscreen of a car travelling below. The rock instantly killed Chris Currie as he drove beneath. Rewiti later bragged to his friends about it before finally being tracked down by the Police.

These are just a couple of examples I can think of off the top of my head. In the states, these would be blamed on violent video games, but whats the excuse here?

Abusive families seems to be the common buzz word. Bit of a cop-out if you ask me. Then next in line comes dysfunctional families.

Always with the family. However, this emphasis on abusive families being the cause of our youth problems in New Zealand is leading us down a very dangerous path. We now have Sue Bradford managing to get a bill read before Parliament that is attempting to make it illegal for a parent to hit a child in any way, shape or form. This bill is commonly referred to as the “anti smacking bill” because of the repercussions of this bill.

The parallels here are scary. In the US we have a situation where the game is to blame. So lets ban the game. In New Zealand we have a situation where family abuse must be the cause, so lets find a way of dealing with that. Of course, which is the more serious threats of those two tactics? Ban freedom of expression and art, or ban any form of physical contact that could be used to discipline children.

My personal belief is that the cause of both problems is very much the same thing, and that the blame being placed on video games is unjust, just as saying that smacking a child should also become illegal. What is the cause in my view? Discipline… Or better put, the complete lack of discipline and guidance from parents in our current era.

Actually, I have to start blaming those baby boomers that made up the hippy collective during the 1960s and 1970s. For me, their ideals of freedom were excessive and taken way too far. In the same way that feminism is now swinging the pendulum too far in one direction, I think we are now seeing the after effects of people like Sue Bradford and the generation of Hippies who believed that a child should be left to do their own thing and it is wrong for us to impose our own views or opinions on children of any age.

Google has closed the CYFSwatch blog. With good reason. CYFSwatch was always running along the knife edge when it came to staying within the Terms of Service and the policies of the Blogger service. However, publishing a post that says Sue Bradford is a great candidate for New Zealand’s first political assassination is not only threatening, its also just blatantly stupid and childish. Publishing another post asking for her home address is very much threatening. Especially when they later post that they have received her home address. All in all, CYFSwatch was just a completely idiotic site from the beginning.

I was subscribed to the CYFSwatch feed for all of a few minutes until I actually took the time to read what they were saying. From the moment I realised just exactly what they were doing (in my view, character assassination) I unsubscribed and refused to participate in conversations regarding the site. I think I only spoke about the site in public once when Ian, Emma and I were having coffee down on the waterfront. The simple fact is, a site like that deserves to be pulled. Its not about censorship as some have claimed. If that were the case, every ISP in this country would have been directed by the government to block access to the site. Unfortunately, do that would have required blocking access to all of Blogger and every Google hosted site, and personally I think that would have been disastrous for us to even contemplate.

However, you can understand the frustration that they feel. Sue Bradford’s bill has successfully passed its second reading within the House and could quite possibly make it to law by the very narrowest of margins. What does that mean? Well, it means that in an effort to try and make child abuse even more illegal than it already is, the splash effects will also make physically disciplining your child illegal as well. You will no longer be able to smack your child on the bottom. If you do and a complaint is filed, even if it is by the child, you become a criminal and will be forced to defend yourself against criminal charges of child abuse.

Let me repeat that. You will become a criminal for smacking your child.

Why is this such a big issue? Why is it that so many people are against this law?

Well, for starters, in the face of ever escalating violence among young people, we are seeing that maybe, just maybe, things have gone too far in the wrong direction. Where the hippies lived by absolutely no rules and no laws, we are now seeing the effects of that living.

Many children of the hippies are now having children of their own and are suddenly finding that they do not know or are completely unequipped to handle the disciplining of a child. This whole idea of making a child sit in the corner is well and good, but that doesn’t always provide a child with any form of deterrence from being naughty again. Nor does it get the punishment over with in any short time. Sitting in the corner for a while is easy, but the only real cost to a child is that they might get bored. And what if the child decides to play up further and leaves that corner, just to push your limits? What will you do then? Put them in another corner? Lock them in a small dark room? Theres a good idea, because its eventually where society will put them when they get older.

Many children have no fear or respect for the law because they are not taught to be respectful at a young age. They are not taught that there are rules and when you break those rules, you will suffer a punishment of one kind or another. They are not taught simple respect. No “please” or “thank you.” They are not taught that when someone with authority makes a fair request of them to do something, they should do it. Instead, they have no respect for authority and place no value on the laws, lives, opinions and wishes of those around them.

These are things that only a family can teach a child, yet more and more we are seeing families pay no attention to these details. More and more we are seeing children grow up with no boundaries because their parents are absent from their life. Many parents are so unequipped to be parents that they just simply don’t even bother trying, and leave it up to the school system to do their job for them. Many parents are too busy working multiple jobs so they can pay the bills. Or they simply don’t care what their children are doing and pay no attention to it at all.

How many times have you seen parents let the TV bring up their children? Parents are too busy to take notice of, or just not interested in what the children do. The kids get home from school and the easiest way to keep them quiet is to put them in front of TV for a few hours a night. Or, in the past 10 years or so, the trend has been to let them play video games, or play on the internet. Its not harmful right?

Oh, wait… Aren’t those video games the cause of the massive surge in teen violence across the US?

Nay, the problem is that parents do not know how to discipline their children. Nor do they know how to manage an unruly child. A smack on the bottom when a child misbehaves is a short sharp punishment that gets the issue over with and dealt with. Forcing a child into the corner (or onto the “naughty step”) doesn’t resolve the issue immediately, it just drags the problem out. And unless you stay and watch that child there, that child is going to try and push the limits. They will sneak off the step or out of the corner when you’re not looking, and if they hear or see you going to check, they’ll rush back as quick as they can.

On the other hand, a smack to the bottom is a short, sharp notice that what they did is wrong and the punishment is over with immediately. They immediately feel the consequences of it and they don’t like that feeling at all. They are less likely to do something to cause that feeling again because the consequences of doing something naughty will get them a sore bottom. Its not till they are introduced to people like David Benson Pope that they might begin to enjoy having a sore bottom. ;-)

When I was younger, I was a naughty boy and I got myself smacked. Sometimes, if I was really naughty, I got “the strap” on my backside. My friend Scott got smacked and if he was really naughty, his father would use a leather belt on his hand. In fact, most of my friends have been smacked by their parents when they were naughty children. It didn’t hurt us at all, in fact it taught us that there was a consequence for breaking the rules, and if you broke the rules you were definitely not going to like the consequence.

But here is where it gets interesting. Every one of the people I know that have been smacked in their life have gone on to lead very upstanding lives as a good and upright citizen. Many, but not all, of my friends from my school days that were left alone by their parents to run around and do as they please have often ended up ruining their lives in one way or another. Including ending up in rehab for drug addictions, members of gangs, in jail, or just completely out of control in general.

Are violent video games bad? No, they’re not. No more so than song lyrics about sex and drugs were in the 1980s. The issue is not that the children are playing violent video games, but more that the parents are allowing their children to do so. Legislation that all games must have a censors rating on them is just ill conceived and unimaginably impossible to actually put into action. The idea that all games should be played through from start to finish by a censor in the same way movies are watched is just impossible to achieve and shows a complete lack of understanding of what a computer game actually is.

Is child abuse a major problem in New Zealand? Most definitely so. Will legislation against hitting a child make a difference? Not at all. In fact, it will make criminals of good and upright parents who are actually doing the right thing in bringing up their children. Child Abuse will not go away just because Sue Bradford has introduced a law that makes it illegal to hit a child. To think this law will have any effect at all shows a complete lack of understanding of the problem itself and a totally rose tinted view on the world.

Our energies and money would be far better spent educating people to become parents and teaching parents how to actually discipline their children. Teaching the parents how to teach a child respect and basic morality in a world where so much of that has been lost. Help parents learn how to teach children the value of human life.

For in all cases that will help stem the flood of teen violence and also of child abuse. Legislating against games or against smacking will achieve nothing. You’re fighting the wrong battle if that is where you’re targeting your efforts.