President Trump plans to meet with video game industry representatives as he considers responses to gun violence after the Parkland, Florida school shooting that killed 17 people.
The White House released a statement Thursday saying that the meeting would address “violent video-game exposure and the correlation to aggression and desensitization in children.” The White House said it’ll be “the first of many with industry leaders” on this issue.
The president raised concerns about the impact of violent video games and movies on children recently, in a meeting with members of Congress on gun violence.
“The video games, the movies, the Internet stuff, it’s so violent,” the president said, mentioning his son, Barron Trump. “I look at some of the things he’s watching and I say, how is that possible?”
Attendees at Thursday’s meeting include representatives of the Entertainment Software Association, the Entertainment Software Rating Board and the Parents Television Council. Others represent the Media Research Center, a video game distributor, a software company, along with the author of a book linking mass killings to violent video games.
Florida’s Republican Sen. Marco Rubio is among the lawmakers expected to attend.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly referenced the violence in movies and video games during his public comments about guns and school safety since last month’s Florida shooting. Decades of research have failed to find such a link.
Passing along a list of the expected attendees/statement from the White House about today’s meeting with video game industry leaders via pool:
Members of Congress:
- Senator Marco Rubio (R-Florida)
- Representative Vicky Hartzler (R-Missouri)
- Representative Martha Roby (R-Alabama)
External Participants:
- Mr. Strauss Zelnick, Take-Two Interactive (Former Chairman of ESA), CEO of Rockstar Games
- Mr. Brent Bozell, Media Research Center
- Lt. Col. Dave Grossman (Ret.), “On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society” and “Assassination Generation: Video Games, Aggression, and the Psychology of Killing”
- Mr. Pat Vance, President of Entertainment Software Rating Board
- Mr. Mike Gallagher, President and CEO of the Entertainment Software Association
- Mr. Robert Altman, Chairman and CEO of ZeniMax Media (parent company of Bethesda Softworks)
- Melissa Henson, Mother from Parents Television Council
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