Nicole Carmichael

20 Merrick Street
New York, NY

March 12, 2018

The Honorable Cory Booker

One Gateway Center
Newark, NJ 07102

Dear Senator Booker,

Thank you for all the work you have done defending the rights of your constituents in the past
year. I know it couldn’t have been easy, but I encourage you to keep fighting for our right to live,
and for better gun control laws. Unlike many of your colleagues, you have resisted financial
dependency on the NRA. This alone is brave. However, corporate organizations and this tangled
web of politics shouldn’t have a place in our legal system to begin with. This web is distracting
lawmakers from the real issues at hand. Issues that should be bipartisan, such as protecting
young children from being murdered at school, are being diluted as the real cause of the problem
is being deflected onto scapegoat issues. Who are the victims of school shootings? Students.
Who are the people spending time and energy to fight for their rights? Students. Children are the
victims. So how does it make sense to blame video games for the violence, since children are the
target audience for these games? It’s simple; playing this game is a way to pass blame from
lawmakers to the victims themselves. Studies have shown that there is little to no correlation
between video games and increases in violence. It is true that our culture is heavy with toxic
masculinity, and this contributes to the disproportionate amount of white American males who
commit these atrocious crimes. This culture makes guns accessible, and also creates video
games. But one variable does not cause the other. Both toxic masculinity and video games are
present in other cultures, but no other developed country sees the same rates of mass shooting
that we see in America. It will do your constituents no good to claim there’s a correlation
between video games and violence, so I kindly ask you to stand up to President Trump as he tries
to prioritize his paycheck over American lives.

There is an overwhelming amount of evidence pointing away from Trump’s conclusion. A report
published in the journal, Frontiers in Psychology, describes the result of a resting state fMRI
scan that used brain imaging technology to quantify spontaneous brain activity. Spontaneous
brain activity affects execution control and moral judgement, and is linked to violence. The
researchers found no significant difference between the scans of the group exposed to video
games, and the scans of the control group (Pan, Wei, et al., 2018). Adam Lanza, the Newtown,
CT shooter, played Dance, Dance Revolution more than violence video games (Hines, 2017).
This shows there is little connection between video games and violence.

Trump’s response to Parkland students was that a video game rating system should be put in
place. This shows how little he knows about video games. Overall, I want to emphasize that
violence is omnipresent in American culture, as well as many others. It has been a source of
entertainment throughout history. However, the factor that makes America unique is our access
to weapons of murder, and that is the reason for our high rates of mass shootings. There is an
obvious solution to our gun problem, and it is to reduce access to guns, not target video games.

Thank you so much for your time, and for your continued effort to fight for safety in New Jersey.

Sincerely,

Nicole Carmichael
Works Cited

Desta, Yohana. “Donald Trump Boldly Suggests Movies, Video Games Should Get a "Rating
System".” HWD, Vanity Fair, 22 Feb. 2018, www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/02/donald-
trump-movies-video-games-rating-system.

Hines, Terence. "Virtual Violence: A Review of Moral Combat: Why the War on Violent Video
Games is Wrong. By Patrick M. Markey and Christopher J. Ferguson." Skeptic [Altadena, CA],
vol. 22, no. 4, 2017, p. 62+. Academic
OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A520714011/AONE?u=udel_main&sid=AONE&xi
d=184441c0. Accessed 12 Mar. 2018.

Pan, Wei, et al. "Spontaneous Brain Activity Did Not Show the Effect of Violent Video Games
on Aggression: A Resting-State fMRI Study." Frontiers in Psychology, 2018. Academic
OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A522675722/AONE?u=udel_main&sid=AONE&xi
d=c88713e2. Accessed 12 Mar. 2018.