It's an ugly thing. On one side of the coin, it'd be nice if all stores checked IDs or didn't sell R rated movies, explicit CDs, and violent video games to kids. However in today's fast food society or Wal-Marts and other super stores, no one has time/money/patience to train the employees or make sure such policies are enforced. While a person is all for the restricted sales of such content, they'd probably be the first person in a packed check out line to holler at the clerk about speeding it up and GO GO GO and that the clerk doing their job was doing poor customer service because they took to long.

However on the other side, how much do we want the government to step in? Gamingguy: no one is asking for existing laws on selling beer and such. Why you got this impression I have no idea. Violent video games fall under that same area as R rated movies, music with swear words/violent/sexual/provocative lyrics, and equal "R" rated novels. When the government gets involved with the control of one media, they can't stop there and they won't. They clamp down on the release of violent video games. Okay. Now they have to enforce the same restrictions on video sales to keep the video game industry happy. Then it moves onto the music scene. Then it goes onto the books we read. See where I'm going with this? It can't be just one thing, it WILL filter down to maintain a checks-and-balances system. Then there's the idea of the law parenting your children. It's flawed. Why? The children are not liable as adults for their actions. The child might get reprimanded, but the brunt of the punishment would fall to the adult responsible for the child. So we are back to square one-parents must actually be parents. Or the children are harvested for government programming and schooling, which would involve high tax dollars and be one of the biggest controversys ever.

True, parents cannot monitor their kids 100% of the time. That's not what we are suggesting. To do so would socially cripple a child. However, the parents need to get more involved in the child's life. Find out what they do, what they like, etc. Be a part of the kid's life, don't just bring home the bacon. Instill proper values. While this won't prevent kids from playing violent video games or looking at nudie mags (hey if they aren't even REMOTELY interested in the naked body, they ain't human) they will have the values of what's right and wrong (ie not going out and raping somebody after seeing a porn or going on a killing spree) and what's fantasy and reality.