“I don’t expect ATF is going to come bang down my door, round up all the kids and throw them into a buggy or anything,” Richardson said, referring to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Richardson worries the legal murkiness will stifle the industry’s growth in South Carolina. The arcade gaming market share is forecast to grow by nearly $1.8 billion as the entertainment industry recovers from the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a recent market study from Technavio, a London-based research firm. Starting a new business is already a risky proposition - more so when the services sold are technically illegal. The Columbia Democrat did not respond to requests for comment.įrederick Richardson, owner of Bang Back Pinball Lounge in Columbia, has campaigned for years for the law’s repeal, warning lawmakers about its impact on the game’s popularity. State Representative Todd Rutherford sponsored the bill that would end the prohibition, known as H3227, which was referred to the South Carolina House Judiciary Committee and first read Jan. It’s not the first time state lawmakers have attempted to repeal the unusual law, which dates back to a time when pinball was mired in controversy over gambling and organized crime. Now, amid a surge in the game's popularity, a bill recently introduced in the South Carolina Legislature would end a more than 60-year-old prohibition on children playing pinball in the Palmetto State. No less than five pinball-related controversies were settled by the South Carolina Supreme Court between 19, as state and federal law enforcement officials played cat-and-mouse with the game’s manufacturers over features that turned the devices into not-so-secret slot machines. But those laws were repealed, leaving South Carolina as the last state in the nation where a pinball prohibition remains on the books, albeit unenforced. In the 1940s and 1950s, states and municipalities across the country banned the game for similar concerns. One senator prayed pinball would be banned before the state became “like Louisiana.” In South Carolina, lawmakers wrung their hands over the “cancerous” and “vicious” machines. (CN) - Not even a century ago, mothers decried pinball as a gaudy game that lured children into delinquency and school-yard debt.
0 kommentar(er)
