Gun control task force meets with video game industry
Posted at: 01/11/2013 6:41 PM
| Updated at: 01/11/2013 8:44 PM
By: Danielle Leigh, NBCNC
Vice President Joe Biden hopes to make recommendations to the president for curbing gun violence early next week.
He wrapped up several days of meetings Friday after sitting down with the video gaming industry.
Violence in video games was the focus.
The encounter marked Vice President Biden's sixth and final meeting examining stricter measures following last month's massacre in Newtown, Connecticut.
The problem, Biden says, isn't limited to mass shootings.
"10,000 people a year are gunned down in our cities. It's a real problem," Biden noted.
In a letter to Biden the gaming industry argued violent games aren't the problem, but "could be part of the solution."
The science behind whether violent games lead to violent behaviors is mixed.
On gun reform, the Obama administration appears committed to seeking universal background checks, limits on high capacity magazines and a ban on assault weapons.
But will it pass Congress?
Former Homeland Security Security Tom Ridge is hopeful.
"I think it will. I think the mood of the nation has changed," he says.
National Rifle Association President David Keene is promising a fight.
"I do not think that there's going to be a ban on so-called assault weapons passed by the Congress," he says.
Keene says Thursday's meeting with Biden left them far apart on a solution to the violence,
even as another school shooting occurred, this time at a high school in rural California.
The divide ensures a tough road ahead.
President Obama says he'll announce his next steps shortly after his inauguration in a little over a week.
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