Joe Biden floats idea of a tax on violent video games and other media

In a meeting about gun control with national religious leaders like Rev. Billy Graham, Joe Biden uttered the words that would flood the gaming subreddits and seep through to the rest of social media. According to an attendee of the meeting, Biden “floated the idea that media and entertainment that portray violence should be subject to a special tax, with the proceeds going to help victims and their families.” He also said that there was “no restriction on the ability to do that, there’s no legal reason why they couldn’t.”

This is the ACLU’s fault (of course), since their bulldog attitude toward these sorts of initiatives make it totally safe for politicians to bluff about taking them up. Does Joe Biden have a plan in place, a congressional vote chart drawn out on a whiteboard in his office? Of course not; this is utterly meaningless wind, since everybody in that room is well aware that no such tax will ever be introduced. It’s been tried before, and the opposition to it is so strong that you can now even float the idea of a content-based artist tax and it’s such a non-starter idea that it usually has no fallout at all. It’s an issue that’s only useful in plastic-faced meetings like this one.

The Obama administration has already made it clear, however, that violent media are a source of worry in a more general sense. They’ve funded research into the effects of exposure to violent games in thewake of the Sandy Hook tragedy, at least hypothesizing the same link made explicit by Biden’s gamer-reparation plan. This might be more reasonable if that precise issue hadn’t been studied many times already. Hillary Clinton was banging the same drum for many years until she got enough power to concern herself with more important things, even going so far as to maintain a brief association with Jack Thompson.

These are issues picked up and given a cursory run through the docket. A few speaking appearances, fundraising dinners, a likely bogus study or two, and problems can go away. They ignore the legal, constitutional, and popular opposition that has demolished many similar ideas in the past because there is no actual thought of bringing them to fruition, these days. It’s just wind, but that doesn’t necessarily make it any less repulsive to hear said aloud.