Vice President Joe
Biden said on Friday he was “shooting for Tuesday” to get President
Barack Obama his recommendations on how to battle an epidemic of gun
violence and warned “there’s no silver bullet” to stop the killing.
Biden was meeting in the
Eisenhower Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House with
executives from video game companies whose products have often been
blamed for making players insensitive to real-world violence.
"I come to this meeting with no
judgment. You all know the judgment other people have made," Biden said.
(He did not elaborate, but one attendee brought a copy of the book
“Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games.”
A summary is here.)
The vice president has been
meeting with government officials, gun-violence victims and their
advocates, retailers, Hollywood executives and groups like the National
Rifle Association that advocate gun rights.
He said earlier this week that he
hoped to get his report—commissioned in the aftermath of the elementary
school slaughter in Newtown, Conn.—to Obama on Tuesday. His advice is
expected to reinforce Obama's calls for Congress to renew the assault weapons ban, toughen background checks and impose new restrictions on purchases of high-capacity ammunition magazines.
"I'm shooting for Tuesday. I hope
I get it done by then,” he said on Friday, cautioning that "we know
that there's no silver bullet."
Biden asked whether a “coarsening
of our culture” might be partly to blame, but added: "I do not know the
answer to that question."
The vice president, Attorney
General Eric Holder and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen
Sebelius represented the administration in this week's meetings. The
video game industry was represented by officials from such brand-name
software companies as Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts, and
retailers like GameStop. There were also researchers from the University
of Wisconsin-Madison and Texas A&M University.
