Fresh from the let’s-just-ban-anything-we feel-like files… apparently Venezuela’s parliament has approved a law that bans the import, production or sale of violent video games within the country.

According to GamePolitics.com, the law will go into effect some time in the next three months, and calls for penalties of up to three to five years of incarceration for each offense. Ria Novosti claims that even the national media will also be banned from running ads for “toys of a military nature”, because of the pressure from groups in the capitol that believe such toys and games encourage violence in youth.

While this isn’t a blanket ban on games (though it’s not entirely clear who’s going to be determining what games are “legal” and which aren’t), it certainly sets off some alarm bells. The Venezuelan government’s claim is that this is an effort to reduce the widespread violence that occurs in the country… essentially that games (and other “violent” toys that are lumped in with the law) are one of the root causes of violence among teenagers - a theory that has yet to be proven conclusively one way or the other here in the U.S. (or anywhere else, for that matter), in spite of feverish arguments made on both sides of the fence.

It just goes to remind us… the U.S. isn’t alone in it’s kneejerk reactions when it comes to violence. Unfortunately, banning a form of entertainment as a root cause of that violence is a little too much like putting a Band-aid on a severed limb. The reality is that all laws like this do is allow the people in the government to say “Hey, look! We’re fixing the problem! Keep voting for me!” while at the same time changing virtually nothing.