This Game’s Not for City Hall

The following are examples of the Los Angeles City Council rightfully interceding on behalf of the best interest of youngsters: denying a liquor permit to a Van Nuys market near four schools; declaring two minimarkets public nuisances and demanding they take 21 corrective actions, including posting a security guard to prevent loitering. But when council members start talking about regulating access to video games with violent content in arcades throughout the city, as Rudy Svoronich Jr. and Nate Holden have, they go beyond their authority. This, unfortunately, would be nothing new for the council.

Svoronich and Holden want the city’s legislature analyst, the Police Department and the city attorney to spend important time researching and reporting on ways to limit youngsters’ access to video games depicting violence. The City Council should take a pass.

It does have a reputation to live down regarding actions far from normal business. It once voted to support the effort of then- President George Bush and the United Nations to drive Iraqi troops from Kuwait. Years earlier, it opposed the Reagan administration’s refugee policy. And, in 1993, it urged the Clinton administration and Congress to lift the military’s ban on homosexuals.

All those are or were important national issues. But does anyone care about the Los Angeles City Council’s stand on them? This isn’t the U.S. Congress. Isn’t there enough city business that needs attention and is within the council’s true area of responsibility?

To be sure, teh cops- and- robbers games of generations past pale in comparison to the gory and gratuitous violence found today in popular interactive video games. But, with all due respect, the issue deserves a higher level of debate than our council can provide.