We all know that American society as a whole is some of the most prissy, stuck-up, and over-protective in the world. This is a county with 4% of the world's population and 75% of the lawyers, where liberals scream bloody murder and conservatives complain about a liberal press. We really don't have any boundaries for what's acceptable anymore, as this is really the only country that believes in political correctness to this degree of insanity.

Violent videogames have recently become a hot-button issue, as some lawmakers are calling for a 100% tax on violent videogames and crying that they are the new Satan. While I do believe that parents need to be conscious of what their children are playing, I think that too many people take the issue way too far. Several reasons why violent videogames, under specific conditions, are not all bad:

1) Parents are too protective. Not to say that we should raise kids to be guerrilla warfare experts or drug dealers, but I think that children need to have some outlet to the real world. Why not bring it to a domain that's accessible to kids, through videogames?

2) Frankly, some of the best games out there have violent content. Many of the classics - Doom, Half-Life, Halo, Resident Evil, even Bond - bring different degrees of violence to the homefront. Zelda, Mario, and Madden can get you only so far.

3) What legislators want to accomplish would be so much more effective if parents would take an active role in what their kids play. While this is somewhat unreasonable to expect, it's unfair to gamers as a whole to make games $120 a pop - the average gamer is in his/her twenties. Parents, not politicians, should be parenting. (Would you believe me if I said that my dad suggested Zelda: Ocarina of Time because they said it was kid-friendly? It's true. And that is my favorite game ever even today.)

4) Videogames, violent included, are a common medium with which to make new friends and socialize with the current ones. Since they've become so huge over the last few years, and since all of my friends game, we discuss them and play over Xbox Live. Don't misunderstand me - it's still just a hobby, and I still only play an hour or two a day. So do my friends. Yet I've met a lot of great people and had a lot of interesting conversations with gaming as the common medium, and obviously I've had a lot of fun in the process.

5) Most importantly - the violence lying behind 95% of violent videogames is not entirely morally wrong. Even the most gruesome games (RE4) out there have the protagonist fighting for a noble or otherwise not evil cause. It's not the violent content that makes games "bad" - it's what drives the game's violence, and how explicit developers choose to make it. Games like Halo and RE4 will not inspire students to kill their classmates with Dad's gun. Hypothetically, if I were a parent, I would be more concerned about games like GTA, which are obviously fraught with bad moral direction. Even so, from the real perspective of a teenager, I know that GTA alone will not give kids these ideas anyway - it's all about the guidance that parents offer. That's all.

On a side note, I think that part of the reason I have a profound enjoyment of videogames is that they are a portal to a different world. This is the kind of thing that lets me unwind best, and it gives me a chance to "exercise my inner demon" on something that isn't even real. I've been playing violent videogames since I was real little (6?) and I've never so much as hit anyone in my life. I've never done drugs or alcohol, I have a great set of friends, and I make honor roll every year. I have great parents, and that's all the explanation I need.