Venezuela bans toy guns, violent video games

"The Venezuelan parliament has adopted a law outlawing the production, import and sale of toy weapons and violent video games, the Globovision TV station said on Friday.

The law, violation of which is punishable by jail terms of between three and five years, will come into force in three months' time.

National media will also be banned from running adverts for toys of a "military" nature that are likely to encourage the formation of "aggressive" tendencies among young children and teenagers, the station said.

Pressure groups in the capital, Caracas, say the bullet is one of the leading causes of death for 15-26 year olds. The government stopped releasing murder statistics in 2005."

Note from lightbleeder:

I live in Caracas, Venezuela and I find this all pretty funny actually, this is a lawless country, few laws are enforced here if any. I don't really know how they're going to punish people, here the piracy is legal (YES! PIRACY IS LEGAL IN VENEZUELA!) and vendors sell a lot of pirate games, most of them violent games like GTA4 and COD4 for example. Also arcades are filled with cabinets that have guns and sniper rifles, and then you enter a cybercafé you'll always see people playing LAN party games like Counter-Strike.

Also it's pretty clear that videogames are not the root cause of the violence in this country, poor people don't really have the money to pay for videogames and much of the violence occur in poor neighborhoods. Criminals posess a lot of real guns, the government spends more buying military weapons that it spends on medicine and education and president Chavez is commonly seen in military uniform doing military acts weilding guns and talking about war. There's also a new toyline made from independence heroes weilding guns and swords and I guess they won't ban them, but a nerf gun is banned from this country as of now my fellow gaming friends...

AIRSOFT AND PAINTBALL IS ALSO BANNED, THAT AND ANY TOY RESEMPLING ANY WEAPON... I'LL BUY MODERN WARFARE 2 ANYWAY, IF I STOP POSTING THAT'LL MEAN I'M DOING JAIL TIME...

Hahaha I find this extremely funny. I used to live in Venezuela, and still go there because my father still lives and works there, and it's like you say, Venezuela is a lawless country, and piracy is the most common practice. Plus a law like these makes no sense. Are they simply going to tear down all cybercafes, arcades and random machines in cafes found all over the country? Hell, even in Anaco, there's like 4 cybercafes and 2 arcades, and it's a small town.

Also Venezuela is becoming more and more of a military state, and it's high criminal rates, which were high even before Chavez went to the presidency, belies with the high poverty rate of the country.
Didn't knew about airsoft and paintball, can they be more ridiculous?

Makes sense from a political standpoint; a populist policy that gives the impression of fighting violence, that has the added benefit of targeting the wealthy as opposed to the poor (If your going to restrict something, make it something your opponents have!)

I imagine it will be rather inconsistently enforced, though it may end up being used as a weapon to target people at whim.

You make a point in there stof, seeing that most laws enforced in Venezuela target the wealthy as opposed to the poor. The main problem in venezuela is that the video game industry, mainly retailers, are in shambles because of the huge piracy levels in the country, being that piracy is in fact legal.
This will just put another nail in the coffin for videogame retailers in the country, due to the FPS genre being the most popular by far.

keep the faith alive my fellow lightbleeder xD

i hope chavez isn't still pissed over Mercenaries 2

lightbleeder said:

I know this is off topic, but that kid in the white shirt has one hell of a mullet.

This is just another political tool for Chavez. Either it is meant to be used against political opponents, or he intends to use it in an attempt to pacify the younger generation so an uprising is less likely. Obviously, if crime was any concern to him, he wouldn't send oil and money to places like Cuba and instead use it to pay for more police (and instruct the police he has to actually enforce the laws...although that would never happen since they would have to arrest quite a few of his supporters).

When you take from the wealthy to give to the poor that's simple populism, and it simply does not work, most people earn their wealth with hard work...

Unless you, or he or anybody else, actually thinks that videogames cause violence, then the bolded one seems unlikely. Again, this seems less evil genius and more placating politician.  And yeah, I do think crime is a big concern to him, because it's his achilles heel politically. Despite the changes he's made to the constitution, he still relies on actual elections, and Venezuela's crime rate is the kind of thing that can sink his support among his traditional supporters.