[Cerek]

Originally Posted by Bungleau Let's keep it civil, every one. Sniping on any side will not help to make one's point. Thanks for the clarification on the Village, Yorick. I may have to get past my distaste for her to read her thoughts.

I can give a personal example from my youthful day. A new bowling alley opened in our little town right after I graduated high school. I was there one evening with some of my friends having a good time, but bowling a lousy game. As my game got progressively worse, I got frustrated and started spouting profanity after each ball. This continued for a couple of frames. Finally, one of my friends pointed out that there was a family using the lanes next to us and they had their very young son with them - around 5-6. My buddy said "Uh, you might want to tone your language down a bit." I looked over at the mom and felt like crawling under the table. I had gotten so wrapped up in myself that I didn't pay attention to anyone around me. I was just showing out in front of my friends.

I sheepishly apologized to their mom and tried my best to turn invisible for the rest of the evening.

I could have said "Hey, it's a free country with free speech. I have a right to cuss if I want to." Well, that may be true, but I also have an obligation to NOT have a negative influence on young child if I can avoid doing so.

As for the games in question, I'm really not overly concerned about them falling in the hands of young kids (although that IS a problem). I agree it falls to the parent to prevent that from happening. My concern is more with the young adult crowds, the ones that are wanting to establish their own identity. It is a natural instinct for youths in this group to want to "challenge the system" and a game like GTA4 only feeds that instinct even more. The fact is, young children aren't the ones going out trying to steal cars or shoot police officers. It's the young adults who are usually past the age of parental control that do these things.

While it IS the parent's responsibility to establish a sense of morals and "right and wrong" in their children, the parent can only do so much. I'm certain everyone here can think of at least one person they grew up with that had good parents and a good home, but still ended up doing things they shouldn't and getting in a lot of trouble. Parenting only goes so far.