Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 6, 1993 TAG: 9302060021
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By DAVID M. POOLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
MURDERERS' TRADING-CARD BILL KILLED
Del. Creigh Deeds is all for kids collecting cards, but he draws the line when they trade two Mickey Mantles for one Ted Bundy.As in Ted Bundy, the serial killer.
Deeds introduced legislation at the General Assembly aimed at preventing children from buying "mass murderer" trading cards that began appearing in card shops last year.
"Baseball cards are one thing," saying he would try to come up with language that singled out trading cards said Deeds, a Bath County Democrat. "Why should children be exposed to harmful material?"
But lobbyists succeeded in killing the mass-murderer-card bill over concerns about constitutional guarantees of free speech.
The bill would have allowed localities to pass obscenity ordinances that would prevent juveniles from viewing material depicting "gruesome death or mutilation."
Representatives for the motion picture industry, video dealers and comic book stores went gunning for the bill at a recent committee meeting. Some warned that it was so broad that even prime-time television shows would be off limits to anyone younger than 18.
"It might not have even affected those mass-murderer cards, but it sure would have affected a lot of other things," said Guy Tripp, a Richmond lawyer who lobbied for the Motion Picture Association of America.
Deeds withdrew the bill, saying he would try to come up with language that singled out trading cards featuring blood-splattered drawings of the Hillside Strangler, Jack the Ripper and Bundy.
Each killer's particular deeds - mass murder, dismemberment or depraved sexual acts - are recounted on the flip side of the cards like batting averages.
Deeds said card shops had no business selling children cards that glorify killers like James Huberty, who gunned down 21 people at a McDonald's restaurant in 1984.
"It's tough enough to grow up without have to be exposed to that," he said.