Jack Thompson, a Miami attorney, has declared war on producers and sellers of video games that teach kids to steal and murder. He is asking stores such as Best Buy and Wal-Mart to quit selling Grand Theft Auto, which he describes as a "murder simulation game, a game on which people are surely training how to commit crimes." Months ago, before the Beltway snipers were caught, Thompson said on NBC’s Today show that the sniper would be a teen who trained on a video game to kill. He says that NBC reported in January that that the teenager, John Lee Malvo, was trained by John Muhammad on the Xbox game, Halo, in order to "break down his inhibition to kill humans."

Here’s how the National Institute on Media and the Family describes Grand Theft Auto: Vice City." The gamer plays the role of Tommy Vercetti, a member of the mob who is on the search for money and drugs that were stolen from him during a drug deal gone bad. He performs different missions for the mob boss throughout Vice City including murdering a pizza boy, picking up hookers, killing a businessman with a golf club at a driving range, and savagely murdering prostitutes."

The Entertainment Software Ratings Board has approved this for players who are 17 or older. That is just the age of the Beltway sniper, John Lee Malvo. Jack Thompson videotaped a ten-year-old boy buying this game at a Best Buy store. Unlike some other chains, Best Buy has refused to limit sales of this and other violence-promoting games to older kids. Thompson has warned the executives of Best Buy and Sony, the company that makes the game, that he will sue them if their reckless policies result in fatal crimes committed by kids who have imitated the behavior portrayed in this game.

A good example of this was the murder of an Ohio teenager, Jo Lynn Mishne, who was beaten to death by fifteen-year-old Dustin Lynch last November. Thompson says that according to witnesses, Lynch played Sony’s Play Station 2 game, Grand Theft Auto 3, using it to prepare himself to beat Jo Lynn Mishne to death. He then stole her car, for no reason, just as one does in playing the game. Her father is suing, and Thompson is representing him.

Thompson says that both the Harvard and University of Indiana medical schools have found that these games "are explosive and crime inducing in the hands of young people." He points out that during the Christmas season even the television networks ran reports warning that these hyper-violent, hyper-sexual games were inappropriate gifts for children.

Thompson is doing more than putting pressure on those who sell these games to young children to cease and desist. He is supporting a bill introduced by a Democrat in the Florida legislature that would outlaw the sale of these adult-rated games to children, but Governor Jeb Bush has not as yet displayed any willingness to endorse it. His lack of interest in protecting young kids from these vile games is mystifying. Jack Thompson points out that such a law has been passed in St. Louis County, Missouri and that it has been upheld as constitutional by a federal judge.

Reed Irvine can be reached at aimreed@yahoo.com