Legislator Opposed to Violent Video Games Is Charged With Arms Dealing

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California state senator Leland Yee was indicted last week and charged with, among other things, conspiracy to import and traffic in firearms without a license. That could get him five years in prison (he faces another 120 for corruption charges). The Mercury News quotes an FBI affidavit alleging that Yee agreed to set up an arms deal in exchange for "donations," and that the deal could have included up to $2.5 million in automatic weapons.

The irony is that, as others have pointed out (Boing Boing, Techdirt), Yee was previously best-known for sponsoring AB 1179, which banned the sale of violent video games to anyone under 18 because of the clear connection between those games and violent behavior. The Supreme Court later ruled 7-2 that the law was unconstitutional, partly because the connection actually is not at all clear.

As recently as January of last year, Yee was still going on about this, and—during the same period in which he was allegedly taking bribes and agreeing to set up arms deals—told gamers they should shut up because they had no credibility in this argument:

"Gamers have got to just quiet down," Yee, D-San Francisco, said … "Gamers have no credibility in this argument. This is all about their lust for violence and the industry's lust for money. This is a billion-dollar industry. This is about their self-interest."

Whose lust for what now?