Fucking up, it's what Penny Arcade does:

For the uninitiated, Penny Arcade is a comic that has a problematic history of being completely ignorant, including rape jokes, dismissing what people are telling them. Recently they weighed in on the gun control debate.

http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2012/12/21

Evidently the dickwolves fiasco didn't educate them on how not to fuck up. Why is this a fuck up? It's simple.

The argument they're "arguing" against is a massive fucking red herring.

For starters? The idea that video games cause violence by themselves is complete bunk, however, if it was true?

1. The first amendment does not allow everything anyone wants to do.

There are many legally prohibited behaviours that one may not do, for example shouting fire in a theater, making threats, hate speech. If the first amendment was absolute? It would be okay to use racial slurs on TV, since it is not? It is not absolute license.

Also we would not have things like defamation laws.

Ergo, if video games did cause violence, then prohibiting whatever part of them caused it would not necessarily violate the first amendment.

2. Secondly, if video games did cause violence, it does not follow that new laws would be the logical answer to that.

Most of the ratings systems the TV and game industry uses now? All voluntary. Supposing that video games did cause violence, it would be well within the industries power to tighten those guidelines or to up the rating based on violence.

Games that don't make money don't get made, ergo if video games caused violence, and we could isolate the reason? It would not be hard to convince much of the public to not buy (cripes look at how effective the vaccine autism bollocks is, a similar campaign could devastate the games industry) such games.

No new laws? No possible violation of the first amendment.

3. Last but not least, the constitution is a living document, it's meant to evolve. By setting themselves up as champions of the first amendment? They are apparently arguing that this living document and how we interpret it should remain set in stone because red herring arguments are scary.

Fact is there are plenty of counter arguments to such claims. By even bothering with the red herring argument, they grant it validation and distract from the real point, which is to do something about spree killing.

Penny Arcade could have brought up that the majority of spree killers are white males, or tackled the fact that guns are often advertised in ways that tag gun owning with manliness. The weapon used in the Sandy Hook killing spree actually comes with a "man card", as if owning the gun somehow makes a man a man. They could have brought a legitimate argument to the table to counter the ridiculous distraction techniques of the NRA. They did not. A comic based on the ridiculous idea that a piece of metal that shoots other pieces of metal makes one a man could have been hilarious.

Instead they fucked up, and the gross part is they totally erased the victims in their zeal to argue against regulating the media as if there was a serious threat to media (which there is not, Thompson proved that!). There are 20+ people and families that will never be the same, but Penny Arcade has nothing to say about them it seems.

Penny Arcade's comic comes off as sensitive and as informed as the wailing tantrum of a three year old who has overheard the adult's discussing presents for children who do not have any, and assumed that they intend to give his toys to the children who do not have any. The comic is self involved, short sighted, poorly written and generally lives up to the stereotype of the selfish manchild geek.

Yet again, I'm not impressed with the privileged ignorance of the owners.