BREAKING NEWS

Trump to meet with video game executives to discuss gun violence

LOS ANGELES - President Donald Trump will meet with executives from the video game industry next week to talk about gun violence, the White House announced on Thursday.

Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said at the press briefing that the meeting will be in the context of issues of violence and school safety, and the executives will offer their input "to see what they can do on that front."

While Trump indicated support for a series of gun measures on Wednesday in a meeting with Capitol Hill lawmakers, last week he also talked about the problem with violence in video games and movies, and suggested that the current rating system was not adequate.

A spokesman for the Entertainment Software Association, which represents video game makers, had no immediate comment. It's unclear if the White House will seek a similar meeting with studio reps and the MPAA.

In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shootings in 2012, then-Vice President Joseph Biden held a series of meetings with different groups over the issue of gun violence. He met separately with representatives from the movie and TV business, and later from the video game industry.

No concrete action came out of the meeting, although the White House did recommend more research on the connection between on-screen violence and real life.

The Supreme Court in 2011 struck down a previous attempt by the government to regulate the depiction of violence in video games, concluding that the games were protected by the First Amendment. At issue was a California law that attempted to restrict the sale of violence video games to minors.