An Illinois politician wants to ban the sale of games like Grand Theft Auto, as he believe that these games are the main reason for high volume of carjacking in the real-world. The politician also wants to change the definition of violent video games, in order to keep the community safe in the process.
The current the Violent Video Games Law in the Criminal Code of 2012, only prohibited the sale of violent video games to minors. But Illinois state representative Marcus C. Evans Jr. wants to amend the Violent Video Games Law in the Criminal Code of 2012, by introducing his HB3531 bill, which would prohibit “the sale of all violent video games like Grand Theft Auto in the state”, with a penalty of up to $1000 for those selling violent games.
If this bill pasess successful it would also change the definition of a violent video game to anything that allows “a user or player to control a character within the video game that is encouraged to perpetuate human-on-human violence in which the player kills or otherwise causes serious physical or psychological harm to another human or an animal”.
This is not the first time someone is asking for this against games like Grand Theft Auto, now-disabled lawyer, Jack Thompson, has frequently tried to argue that the open-world crime franchise is responsible for a variety of killings, including those targeting police officers. Of course, the lawyer usually laughed out of court despite his ambition to destroy Rockstar and the parent company Take-Two Interactive.
Now the Illinois state representative Marcus C. Evans Jr’s bill is the latest expansion in these type of things. Which we don’t know if is going to pass in the courts as it is still in the early stages, and is facing a lot of backlash from the community.