April 30, 2008 -
A member of New Zealand's Parliament has called for a ban on Grand Theft Auto IV.As reported by Scoop, Independent MP Gordon Copeland wants GTA IV to be unavailable to New Zealanders. Copeland told Scoop:
Sadly New Zealand has become a violent society. Our criminal courts are almost log jammed with cases involving murder, manslaughter, rape, and other heinous crimes. Our jails are overflowing.
A recent study has indicated that, on a per capita basis, New Zealand is now twice as violent as the USA...
Simply stated, it is time to reverse the tide of violence in New Zealand. We have to have the courage somewhere, sometime, to say "no" and I agree with kiwi parents and the police, that this is not a bad place to start.
Comments
So, per capita, what's the video game use in each society? If it's higher in the US, maybe you need to *push* video games.
(yeah, yeah, I know correlation and causation and all that bit)
It's about time they do something about it.
And they decide to put that initiative towards.. banning a video game.
Fucking brilliant. Just fucking brilliant.
Two guesses why New Zealand has gone to shit with politicians like this.
*facepalm*
Does anyone honestly believe that if every single game was banned, collected and burned, violence would cease to exist?
Here's a better way to put that.
Does anyone honestly believe that if every single game was banned, collected and burned, even .5% of violence would stop?
But don't stop there!
Ban violent media like Television! And cartoons! And of course ban all movies with even a hint of sex or violence, those are never good forms of entertainment.
And don't forget music! A lot of music has violent lyrics, or at least conjures up suggestive imagery.... gotta ban the music too!
BOOKS! You have to ban books too! There's all kinds of violence and evil and people doing stuff to each other, you just have to ban books! Think of how much it will help society if you just burn all those nasty books...
Then there's paintings. Full of sex, wars, people's faces... gonna have to shred and destroy and burn all the paintings too.
Oh, and speech. Can't have people talking, they might talk about violence or something.
Hmm... then what can we ban? Oh, nevermind, I'm sure once all that stuff is forbidden there just won't be any violence in New Zealand anymore.
You don't think censorship and limited rights are bad ideas?
Because right now, New Zealand is heavily censored and their citizens rights are very limited.
How's that been working out for them?
Oh, right. It hasn't.
Nice sentiment. Too bad your "solution" will have no effect on the problem.
~~All Knowledge is Worth Having~~
I'm really eager to start the cleaning of all this filth from our world so that we may finally create a politician's utopia.
Sincerely LujanD, the futuristic and politically correct version.
The largest portion of crimes were classified as "Dishonesty". Aside from sounding Orwellian, it's very closely tied to the state of the economy, as was admitted.
For violent crimes, the 3rd largest portion, the bulk of reports were from "Threats/Intimidation". Any crime recorded in this way had no official physical component.
Of course this study was only for New Zealand between 1996-2006.
Even in my embarrassingly limited research, I'm pretty convinced that he's either wrong, lying, or using 'violent' in the same frame of reference that the law enforcement use. Which is to include non-physical encounters, Threats/intimidation.
"As David Rossman, one of the world's foremost experts in the field of violent crime, has said "These (video games) are actually killing simulators and they teach... to kill in much the same way the astronauts on Apollo 11 learned how to fly to the moon.""
I'm sure someone quoted this guys before. Never mind the fact that the astronaut metaphor is completely and hoplessly inaccurate, who is this David Rossman? He doesn't seem like much of an expert if this bull is what he comes up with.
"Simply stated, it is time to reverse the tide of violence in New Zealand."
The tide that started on April 29th 2008? lol
"We have to have the courage somewhere, sometime, to say "no" and I agree with kiwi parents and the police, that this is not a bad place to start.""
If only they had the courage somewhere, sometime to go after the real causes of crime, instead of calling for a ban on a video game that has been available for less than a week and blaming it for all of their societies problems.
Maybe we should just send that Richard Bartle blog post to each and every politician that tries to get a quick 15 minutes of fame with this poorly considered bollocks.
Sir that sounds like a challenge to me. :D
So, no- one should NOT be expecting a grain of wisdom from these people.
With a politician like this no wonder why New Zealand has an uprise in violence.
How more honest can I be?
People tend to argue the interactivity element. However that argument holds no water as there have been no studies done with conclusive results proving any causation.
IIRC, BBFC said that the lack of interactivity in movies made them *WORSE* than video games.
catharsis
Look it up. Maybe NZ has a bigger problem. Maybe it should import more games like this. What you have is a bunch of ticked off bored people. If GTAIV isn't there yet and you have this crime wave, maybe it isn't the problem?
Not only do they recycle the same old sources article after article, but they can't even do it accurately.
Not only do they recycle the same old sources article after article, but they can't even do it accurately.
too bad it's a meaningless place to start.
In New Zealand, some (most?) games are censored the same as in Australia (heavily). Yet, despite LESS game influence, their violence is worse. It's pretty clear it's not the games. If it were, the violence would be worse here.
They've also got one of the world's highest domestic violence rates (35% of women interviewed said they'd been victims). Anyone got your copy of WifeBeater for Windows? No? Doesn't exist. New Zealand has a cultural issue with violence that far predates video games.
Oh no.
We're going to ban a game!
He was a member of the Christian oriented United Future party but left after a falling out over a particular bill going through Parliament, a bill he then failed to turn up to vote against, which should tell you how well he follows through on things.
As an American and representative of the United States I will point out to my gov't officials that, we the people, are slacking off when it comes to violent crime rates.
...Solution. Give everyone in the United States free copies of GTA IV!
It's a proven solution to the problem.
Then just reference every JT press release in existence...
...It's a perfect plan... MUHUAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
"We have been expecting you..."
- Excerpt from the Book of Politico Wankery.
@ Demontestament: Bring it on :D
@ Kajex: Actually, that was Aussie, Melbourne I think...
As for Gordon Copeland; he recently managed to sink his own new Christian Conservative party (or whatever the hell they called it) with Destiny Church (a pryamid scheme to pay for "Bishop" Tamaki's mansions).
Secondly his party should concentrate on the effect of paedophiles on the crime rates in New Zealand (take that!).
Thirdly, new statistics show that the criminal population in NZ is aging, with less teens and young adults commiting crime and the recent reports on crime levels overall show that violent crime has fallen in recent years.
But nevermind facts, GTAIV kills prostitutes. I mean just wait; clearly because there have been millions of copies sold we should now be beginning to see a flood of dead prostitutes and cops.
Or not...