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- THE WEEK, Page 20SOCIETYDealing from a Crooked Deck
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- New York state legislators seek to stamp out "killer cards"
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- Jeffrey Dahmer. Ted Bundy. David ("SON OF Sam") Berkowitz.
- Collect 'em, trade 'em, memorize their stats. It's hard for a
- mere baseball card to compete with the latest offering in candy
- stores and comic-book shops: "killer cards" that feature
- notorious mass murderers, complete with gory drawings and
- graphic descriptions of their crimes. Some New York State
- legislators, with the support of victims' rights groups, are
- seeking to crack down on the unsavory trading cards. Their bill,
- which parallels proposed legislation in a handful of other
- states, would make it a misdemeanor to sell such cards to
- minors. Argues sponsor Alan Hevesi, an assemblyman: "Where there
- is excessive violence in a film, children are barred from
- admission, and that's constitutionally protected." But Dean
- Mullaney, a Forestville, Calif., publisher of a line of cards
- featuring fbi agents and crooks, insists that such products do
- not exalt criminals. "Silence of the Lambs won the Academy
- Award," he says, "but it's not a glorification of cannibalism."
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