Nonprofit advocacy group the Parents' Television Council takes their position on enforcement beyond just demanding legal consequences for retailers who sell M-rated games to kids under the age of 17. The council wants games like GTA IV locked up behind store counters, like cigarettes, tobacco and porn.

Gavin McKiernan, national grassroots director for the council, has never played a GTA game and does not dispute the right of mature adults to have access to it.

"The PTC thinks that there's room in our society for adult products, be they video games, movies, magazines, guns, whatever you want," he said. "But scientific research has shown and common sense tells you also that until [as children] we reach a certain stage, your mind and body are still growing and things have a different effect on you than they do as an adult and you don't have the perspectives to make the best decision."

"I know I was a blithering idiot when I was 16, and most people were," he said.

McKiernan believes that violent media actually causes harm to young people, pointing to studies from the University School of Medicine in Indianapolis, Michigan State University, and the University of Oklahoma Medical School, among others, that appear to demonstrate a correlation between exposure to violent games and "aggressive" brain activity in adolescents.

"All of these correlations are the basis for preventative medicine... and the need for preventative steps to be taken, and the medical community accepts that on the whole," he said. "The potential for harm has been proven over and over again."

Video games like GTA IV are evaluated by the Entertainment Software Ratings Board and assigned a rating that indicates the age group for which it is - or isn't - appropriate. And these games are intended for adults, not kids. The Entertainment Software Association's data finds that the average video game player is age 35, and the average video game purchaser is 40 years old.

"If you go into your Wal Mart, the guns are not marketed at eye level to children," McKiernan says. "They are not promoted widely and broadly as something everyone should be heading over to the gun aisle to pick up... But the stores are not treating these games as adult products."

And the ESRB's voluntary regulations are not enough, he said. "Parents can punish their kids for drinking when they're 15, but we still have laws to keep alcohol out of kids hands to help the parents because they can't be everywhere at every time."

"Specifically with GTA, there is no legal ramification for selling this game to children," McKiernan said. "We ask that stores not promote it to the wider audience, to children, and that it be treated like any other adult product, like an adult magazine, that is kept behind counters and not at the sight line and within reach."

Dan Hewitt, the Entertainment Software Association's senior director of communications, said that the laws the Council hopes for have been found unconstitutional over and over again, at every instance.

Nonetheless, McKiernan is frustrated that the ESRB advocates a responsible use of its rating system without lobbying for adoption of these laws, and he feels industry groups like the Entertainment Software Association should be on the front lines of this battle. "It seems hypocritical, from our viewpoint," he said. "These rules should become law and that would increase the enforcement of them... voluntary things tend to meet with varying levels of success."

"An unconstitutional law that repeatedly gets thrown out by the courts is not an effective way to empower parents," said the association's Hewitt, who still feels the most effective regulatory methods involve a collaboration between parents and family advocacy groups to inform themselves, such as the efforts made through ongoing partnership between the Parent-Teacher Association and the ESRB.

"And it's setting up a parameter by which games are being treated differently than other First Amendment-protected material. Treating games differently than books, magazines and movies goes against the First Amendment. You can't codify the ratings system; you can't give it the rule of law, because then you're giving the power of government away to a private entity."

So according to Hewitt, information and communication is still the best way to protect kids from material inappropriate for their age level. "Really robust actions that drive the messages out there, that put tools and information into parents' hands are great ways to educate, empower and ensure that the games kids are playing are the right ones... the activities that we're talking about don't waste taxpayer money, don't waste state resources, and don't waste legislators' time," he said.

By: Brian Crecente

Denver's mass transit system voted down this week a proposal to ban video game ads from its buses and trains, deciding to side with common sense rather than Boston and Portland.

Earlier this week the Regional Transportation District rejected the suggested ban 12-3, citing concerns about freedom of speech.

The ban on adult-rated games was recommended by a committee to the full board after the Parents Television Council and the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood floated the idea.

"It was a tough decision because I think our hearts as a board were with trying to limit exposure to advertisements that promote violence," Boulder board member John Tayer told the Associated Press. "But the overwhelming weight of the legal advice was that if we pursued this, we would face an uphill battle in court."

The council was not present at the vote this week, but a representative said in February that by running mature and adult rated video game ads RTD is doing the residents of Colorado a disservice "with its tacit approval for the dangerous content in the mature-rated video games."

On Wednesday Peggi O'Keefe of the Entertainment Software Association said the proposal was unnecessary and unconstitutional. The industry's Entertainment Software Rating Board enforces strict guidelines about which games are appropriate for minors and how those products can be advertised, she said.

Current RTD policy prohibits deceptive, illegal or obscene material and ads for tobacco products, while requiring that ads be "of a reputable character."

The Council's call for the ban comes after both Boston and Portland put similar bans in place for their mass transit systems.

I spoke with Gavin McKiernan, the National Grassroots Director for the Parents Television Council, earlier this month about the council's decision to try and have a ban passed in Denver.

He said the original idea came from the council's Denver chapter director after he spotted a Grand Theft Auto ad on an RTD train.

"He had seen some of the success in the group we had partnered with in a similar campaign in Boston," he said. "And decided to pursue it in Denver."

I asked McKiernan why they had decided to make their proposal so specific, asking only for a ban on adult or mature-rated video games and not for other things like mature television shows, movies or alcohol.

He said that while the group would be interested in expanding the ban to include adult programming on television, the current rating system would make that quite difficult.

"With advertising television programs its difficult to tie (a show) to a specific rating," he said. "With video games they have the ESRB ratings. "

"We don't put any credence in the television rating programs because they rate their own."

Is it the desire to ban adult and mature video games then, I asked, spurred in part because of the medium rather than the content?

"It's a bit of both," he said. "The bigger concern is with the medium."

What about movies, would the council seek to have ads for adult movies banned?

"There's a difference," he said. "For one, movies and movie theaters have a good history of policing themselves about who can see what. Anecdotally most people assume there is a law saying you can't go see an R rated movie if you are under a certain age."

"The video game industry doesn't have a good history of keeping adult video games out of childrens' hands. We don't anticipate having a similar campaign for movies because of the lack of enforcement (of ratings for) video games."

At least he's up front about his ignorance of the system.