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WASHINGTON — The Senate Judiciary Committee will be holding the first congressional hearing on gun violence Wednesday since the new proposals sets forth by President Barack Obama.
Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president and CEO of the National Rifle Association, is scheduled to testify before Congress. LaPierre has taken a tough stance on gun control legislation in the weeks since the massacre in Newtown, Conn, criticizing the video game industry and the media for promoting violence and the misconceptions about firearms.
"Guns don't kill people. Video games, the media and Obama's budget kill people," LaPierre said at a press conference in December. "There exists in this country, sadly, a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells and stows violence against its own people, through vicious, violent video games with names like 'Bulletstorm,' 'Grand Theft Auto,' 'Mortal Kombat' and 'Splatterhouse.' "
LaPierre called for armed security in every school as a way to protect the nation's children. He said the nation has its priorities out of order by not providing protection for children.
Wayne LaPierre's one of the nicest, kindest people you'll ever meet. But he really does believe in the Second Amendment, as do I, and he sees this as being under very unfair attack. And yet, he recognizes that, you know, we need to work hard to solve these problems.
–Sen. Orrin Hatch
"We care about the President, so we protect him with armed Secret Service agents. Members of Congress work in offices surrounded by armed Capitol Police officers," LaPierre said. "Yet when it comes to the most beloved, innocent and vulnerable members of the American family — our children — we as a society leave them utterly defenseless, and the monsters and predators of this world know it and exploit it. That must change now."
Sen. Orrin Hatch, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he will be listening intently to the comments made by LaPierre.
"Wayne LaPierre's one of the nicest, kindest people you'll ever meet," Hatch said to CNN's Dana Bash. "But he really does believe in the Second Amendment, as do I, and he sees this as being under very unfair attack. And yet, he recognizes that, you know, we need to work hard to solve these problems."
Hatch said he is a strong supporter of the second amendment and intends to fight for the "explicit" definition in the Constitution instead of some of the laws "conjured out of thin air by the Supreme Court." Hatch added, however, that it is time to review the problems that come with more than 300 million firearms in the hands of American citizens.
"He knows with better than 300 million guns out there that the problems are gonna have to be solved in the area of mental health, the type of media that we put up with, the video games that these young kids are playing all the time and things that really seem to distort the mind and cause some of these aberrational — really bad things — to happen," he added.
Astronaut Mark Kelly, husband of former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, will also be among those scheduled to testify at the hearing.
