A burning

(NEWSER) - A Connecticut town is getting ready to burn violent video games to protest their "desensitizing" influence on children, the GUARDIAN reports. A group based in Southington, which sits a half-hour from Newtown, is calling on locals to donate their games, DVDs and CDs in exchange for gift certificates "as a token of appreciation for their action of responsible citizenship," the group says. "Violent games turned in will be destroyed" - burned by town workers, according to tech site POLYGON - "and placed in the town dumpster for appropriate permanent disposal."

The town dumpster? How little is this place, anyway?

The group doesn't blame violent video games for the shooting on Dec. 14, it says, but believes such media have "contributed to increasing aggressiveness, fear, anxiety and is desensitizing our children to acts of violence including bullying."

My thoughts? A desperate desire to do SOMETHING, even if it is only a knee-jerk symbolic gesture which will accomplish nothing. It also smacks of book-burning, which I don't encourage. No, what I want to see (my personal opinion only) is for the states to regulate video games sold within their borders. Unfortunately that means interstate commerce regulation, a province of the federal government, and perhaps that is what we need to see happen in this country. More than the federal government is doing now. Horrors. Did I just write that?

Is regulation of free speech a lesser evil than mass shootings?

These things are already regulated and come with age ratings on them. What am I missing? Ah. Enforcement of the law. Such is the failing of any good-intentioned law.