New York State Senator exploiting the Virginia Tech tragedy to promote an anti video game bill

New York State Governor Eliot Spitzer is working on a anti video game bill. He’s going on an media blitz this week shopping his bill.

GamePolitics.com reports State Senator Andrew Lanza has been appointed to head a legislative task force on video game issues.

Apparently the Virginia Tech tragedy is a driving force behind this new efforts. Says Senator Lanza:

“The Virginia Tech massacre is a painful reminder of the culture of violence which has severe and tragic consequences on our youth and for our society,”

Well, I’ll be damned. A politician blatantly exploiting a horrendous tragedy for his own agenda. What else is new. Nice going Andrew.

Senator Lanza should really do some research on these issues, if he’s to head a task force on it. If he did, he would find out that the Virginia Tech shooter was insane, and did not, I repeat not, play video games. But let’s not get the facts get in the way, we must protect the children from these evil video games, eh?

I knew Eliot Spitzer was a bit of an opportunist, but I figured being an attorney he would’ve done his legal research, including an assessment of the First Amendment issues, before going public with plans to introduce a bill that’s 100% certain to get overturned by the courts as unconstitutional, just like in every other state where similar laws have been enacted.

Raising the Virginia Tech tragedy to promote the bill is disgusting, especially since it’s a lie, but there’s also the fact that various US states have been forced to pay legal fees after they’ve lost lawsuits against their anti video game bills. Here’re a few examples of the costs:

Illinois: $510,528.64
Louisiana: $157,548.00
Michigan: $182,349.00

Who’s going to be accountable in the New York State Senate when their anti video game law suffers the same fate? Eliot Spitzer must know he’s on this path, he didn’t become a high profile white collar crime hunter by being ignorant of the facts. It appears, however, in this case he’s willingly ignoring them to do some political pandering.

Let’s hope the Senator and the Governor get some sense in their heads and drop this vote shopping expedition before it is really going to cost New York State tax payers any serious money. And Mr. Lanza, stop being a dispecable piece of shit.

Here’re the contact information for the two gentlemen in case you wish to express your opinions on their money wasting and attention whoring ways:

http://www.ny.gov/governor/contact/index.html

Eliot Spitzer
State Capitol
Albany, NY 12224

518-474-8390

http://www.nyssenate24.com/contact_info.asp

Senator Andrew J. Lanza

Albany Office
947 LOB
Albany, NY 12247
(518) 455-3215
(518) 426-6852 (Fax)

District Office
3845 Richmond Ave.
Suite 2A
Staten Island, NY 10312
(718) 984-4073

-TPP