COLUMN: Preventive legislative acts prohibit choice, freedom

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by David Hindman

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Manufacturers of children's toys and accessories are some of the pushiest advertisers in any market.

They encourage kids to buy everything from action figures to wallpaper and bed sheets from their favorite television show.

While the level of marketing has not dramatically increased in the last ten years, there seems to be fewer toys not associated with a television show.

If it follows that more children today are buying a majority of TV-related toys, then important questions arise.

Are children less likely to be creative at play time, if they can just act out the stories that they have already seen on TV?

Should society in general be concerned with how its children spend their play time?

What about shows which indirectly advocate violence as a solution to problems? Is it possible for a program to suggest that being able to fight is cool?

When the characters from the show don't disappear at the end of the program, the characters feel more like family members than fiction from cartoons.

Producers and writers are aware of their presence in the lives children; after all, they make a living by being a presence in the lives of the masses. Should they feel responsible if children play too rough when following the examples on TV?

Why even show the violence if TV producers don't intend for children to hurt themselves or others?

How is a child supposed to distinguish between fighting people with evil intents (ruling the world or destroying the environment) and people who want to borrow a toy?

What about the producers of war toys (water guns, guns that shoot balls, cap guns)? Are they advocating violence to impressionable youngsters? Is this wrong? What can be done?

In my personal case, I know that when I was young I wasn't allowed to have a BB gun because my parents would not allow it.

They told me what I could and could not play with. They also set out boundaries for when I rode my bike through my neighborhood.

That's all fine and good for me, but what about people whose parents work all day or people who don't have parents?

Shouldn't some agency protect them? Kids with guardians don't need that violence stuff anyway and it's too hard to reach out to all of the kids without parents, so the obvious solution is to ban violence from television and children's toys.

Well, that wasn't so hard was it? Did anyone have any questions about what just took place? Perhaps one more argument would do.

Consider that violent children are more likely to be violent adults. The best weapon is always prevention, so removing violence from play time will keep little boys and girls from becoming nasty criminals.

Now let's work with another problem: smoking and drinking. Countless deaths can be attributed to these habits every year: heart and lung diseases as well as drunk driving.

These habits are simply nasty and expensive.

Evidently people who choose to participate are making a mistake and something must be done to correct their behavior.

Without parents to look over them, it is clear that they need more guidance than they provide for themselves.

The easiest solution is still prevention, so we should make it impossible for people to make mistakes, right?

Well, I prefer making mistakes to being told what to do. Mistakes assure me that I'm making the stupid decisions rather than just following stupid instructions.

Given the choice between a world devoid of hurt and pain and a world filled with gun-toting jerk-offs who murder unchallenged, I would have to choose the latter.

Fortunately, our options are not limited to the extreme cases.

We live with some universal protections, but we can still make "mistakes."

Where should we draw the line for protective legislation? How about not passing any legislation meant to protect the masses from themselves.

The only actions which should be restricted by legislation should be those that would infringe upon the rights of others.

This item appeared in the Opinion section of the September 8, 1995 issue.

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