"The recurring justification for the ban is that it contributes to criminal sexual urges against children. "
Does anyone offer even the slightest bit of evidence for this, or do they just expect you to believe it because it "feels right to them"?
"So it seems a person can behave as a psychopath in the game but this according to the study has no impact on their empathy in the real world."
Yeah, it's almost as if they aren't the complete drooling, brainwashed morons the pro-censorship liars think they are.
"Should violent video games be banned?"
Obviously no more than violent TV, violent movies, violent music. So, no.
In these debates so far none of them have offered any rational or science based justification for their position beyond "it should be banned". The only argument offered was an argument not based on the latest studies which seem to show that violent video games have no lasting impact on empathy.
Life desensitizes people more than violent video games. It's a violent world that a lot of us have to live in and grow up in. There are wars going on, there are people getting shot and killed left and right, yet violent video games are blamed? Couldn't we just as easily blame politics?
It is fine if a person comes out and says they support censorship and then take a logically consistent position on that. A person who supports censorship all the way will support regulating all human thought once the technology connects us to a degree where thoughts can be monitored and policed. Because if you can ban violent video games even when there are no victims and no scientific evidence showing anyone is harmed, then you can ban anything. If you can ban anything by the argument that it corrupts the mind then you can ban thoughts because if a person has violent thoughts wouldn't this also desensitize them over time and cause them to become a violent person?
Consider that with video games we are discussing what goes on in the brains of the players and people are discussing creating policies to police the mind.
"A person who supports censorship all the way will support regulating all human thought once the technology connects us to a degree where thoughts can be monitored and policed."
This is exactly why this is a topic I can get more emphatic about than I intend to. I see this as a literal crime against humanity and I would place the magnitude of its sinister-ity (should be a word) at potentially comparable to genocide.
The thing about virtual reality, is eventually violent virtual reality will be a thing. In addition virtual reality eventually will be photo realistic. So people who are more sensitive to seeing violence than others will be in a position to declare that everyone should be just as sensitive to seeing it as them, or in essence the logic being that everyone should feel and react to violence as they do. The ban might start at violent video games but what is really going on?
The problem is, if we look at it like this, then we can see anything which disturbs group A can eventually be banned. It might be violent video games today but really whatever the zeitgeist determines is the fashionable thing to ban from the global mind will be banned. This could have a long lasting impact on the species and on the individual. In fact, how will individualism survive in a world where certain thought patterns are systematically disapproved and everything associated with these thoughts banned?
It might not be possible to directly ban violent thoughts, but they can ban violent video games, violent movies, violent lyrics, etc.
"or in essence the logic being that everyone should feel and react to violence as they do"
It always seems to come back to collectivism for these "feels" arguers, doesn't it? They quite literally want to enforce the same feelings for everyone at the barrel of the State's gun.
I gotta be honest, when I decided I would take up the mantle of reason and logic in every discussion, I did not see myself being forced to defend pedo-bots from...not even basic logical fallacies, but the complete and total absence of even an argument. It's not wasted effort for all the reasons you point out in your second-to-last paragraph, but, ick.