In Washington D.C. on Monday, lawmakers introduced the Children and Media Research Advancement Act (CAMRA Act) which, if passed will create a program within the Center for Disease Control to study the effects of media on children.

With video games becoming ever more popular, they have come under the scrutiny of not only parents but the media and politicians as well.

There are some who claim that playing violent video games can lead to violent behavior, especially in younger gamers. On the other hand, some claim that video games serve an educational purpose by stressing problem solving skills. While scientists remain divided on whether or not there is concrete scientific evidence to support either of these claims, one thing is certain: violence in video games has not caused an “epidemic” of youth violence.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ website, violent crime rates (not just crimes committed by young people but all crime) are considerably down and at an all time low in most areas. Since the release of Sony’s PlayStation in 1995, violent crime by the perceived age for offenders age 12 through 17 has gone down 57 percent.

Games like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas have caught the most flak. There has been an abundance of news coverage about this game and its predecessors. Most notably, former first lady and possible presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton has spoken out against GTA on several occasions saying that it “[Grand Theft Auto] has so many demeaning messages about women and so encourages violent imagination and activities and it scares parents.... They’re playing a game that encourages them to have sex with prostitutes and then murder them. You know, that’s kind of hard to digest.”

Clinton went on to say, “Now we know about 92 percent of children and teenagers play some form of video games. And we know that nine out of ten of the top selling video games contain violence.”

While Clinton is right in her statements, they could lead people to think that video games affect all children the same way. Sure, children who display violent tendencies probably do play video games, but so do millions of other children, the vast majority of which do not display any violent behavior.

Many gamers view violent games as an “outlet” for their aggression, enabling them to express their anger by hurting virtual people as opposed to real people.

“I feel that playing video games for the last 10 years has substantially increased my mental ability to be able to better understand the world around me. Violent video games are merely an outlet for the aggression that people give me everyday of my life,” said computer science major Ryan Wallace.

Unfortunately, there are many who have the misconception that crime rates are terribly high and that this is in some way related to video games increased popularity of the last decade.

It is important that gamers understand the changing climate in which their pastime is viewed. Even more importantly, they should let their representative know what they think about video game and media policy.