In Long Island, N.Y., the police seem to think “Grand Theft Auto IV” might qualify as a lethal weapon.

News reports say six teenagers were arrested there Thursday after allegedly robbing a woman and pounding on a passing van. Authorities are saying the teens were imitating club-wielding characters found throughout the game.

About a dozen teens were involved, but police managed to collar only the six. The group, armed with crowbars and sticks, supposedly surrounded the woman’s car and forced her to give them money before she could drive away.

The teens apparently then tried to pull the same stunt on a man driving by in a van, but he managed to catch and pin down one of the assailants until police arrived. The other five teens arrested were caught shortly afterward.

Although two of the teens are considered juveniles, the news reports say all are facing first-degree robbery charges as adults and were held on $150,000 bail.

Now, the question appears to be whether a video-game-made-me-do-it defense will hold up in court.

If the judge is smart, he won’t let it. Because the issue isn’t whether video games affect impressionable people; it’s whether the courts are dumb enough to let such a defense stand.

In the past several years, assorted clinical and academic studies have insisted that video games:

* Cause irritability.

* Reduce stress

* Make players generally sadder.

* Make players generally happier.

* Increase sex drive.

* Decrease sex drive

* Lead to weight gain

* Help improve overall physical fitness

* Diminish social interaction

* Raise social awareness …

Does anyone see a pattern here.

One thing video games don’t do, however, is brainwash people. More likely, the people supposedly suffering adverse psychological effects from video games were already well on their way to dropping all their marbles before they ever picked up a game controller.

What video games threaten to become with this case in New York is an excuse for everything from bad karma to hair loss. This is what happens when society reduces the importance of personal responsibility for one’s actions by encouraging people to solve their problems through litigation.

Thus, the courts become places not to seek justice, but merely to assign blame. And if the case of the rowdy kids finds any resolution with a video-games-made-me-do-it defense attached, it would be within reason to consider the courts to be just as maladjusted as the kids.