Giffords made an emotional plea for action while LaPierre criticized the 'gun-ban agenda.' | REUTERS Focus on Giffords, LaPierre at hearing

The Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on gun control began Wednesday in the most dramatic way possible: Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords urging Congress to act.

“Be bold. Be courageous. Americans are counting on you,” said Giffords, the Arizona Democrat who was seriously wounded in a January 2011 mass shooting that left six people dead and more than a dozen others injured.


( PHOTOS: Senate guns hearing)

In a slow, halting delivery — but one far stronger than when she retired from Congress a year ago — Giffords made a highly emotional plea for action in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., massacre.

“Violence is a big problem,” Giffords added. “Too many children are dying. Too many children.”

Giffords’s rare public appearance was the opening act in what is expected to be a highly contentious day as lawmakers begin considering new gun control measures, a debate that stirs deep passions on both sides of the issue.

( PHOTOS: Gabrielle Giffords’s congressional career)

The senators and witnesses largely repeated their own positions, with little new ground or progress made. But it demonstrated in the clearest possible manner how difficult it will be for Congress to pass any gun legislation.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, quickly warned that the Newtown shooting “should not be used to put forth every gun control measure that’s been around for years.”

Many Republicans have called for the enforcement of current gun laws, instead of implementation of new measures. They also are proposing expanded mental health screening.

Grassley, though, used the session to slam President Barack Obama over his calls for more gun controls, including the president’s use of executive orders to implement some changes to federal gun regulations.

“President Obama has turned the Constitution on its head,” Grassley asserted.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), a tea party favorite just elected in November, cautioned that “emotion leads to bad policy.” For Cruz, “considerations of this body often take place in a fact-free zone.”

Among the witnesses at Wednesday’s sessions were Wayne LaPierre, CEO of the National Rifle Association, and Mark Kelly, Giffords’s husband. The NRA is vehemently opposed to any new federal gun laws, especially Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s (D-Calif.) call for the ban on assault weapons.

At one point, LaPierre criticized the hearing as essentially useless.

“We got to get in the real world with this discussion,” LaPierre said. “This discussion, I sit here and listen to it, and my reaction is how little it has to do with the problem of keeping our kids safe and how much it has to do with the decadelong, two decadelong, gun ban agenda when we don’t even enforce the laws on the books.”

LaPierre said, “People all over the country fear they will be abandoned by our government” during a natural disaster or civil strife and need to be able to defend themselves. He later termed a proposed assault weapons ban “based on falsehoods by people who don’t understand firearms.”

On the other side, Kelly repeatedly issued passionate calls for action. He was joined by Chief Jim Johnson of the Baltimore County, Md., police department. Johnson is also chairman of the National Law Enforcement Partnership to Prevent Gun Violence.

After his wife made her brief statement and painfully walked out of the room, Kelly told the panel that he and Giffords are “both gun owners and take that right and the responsibilities that come with it very seriously.”

“We are simply two reasonable Americans who realize we have a problem with gun violence, and we need Congress to act,” Kelly said. “Gabby and I are pro-gun ownership. We are anti-gun violence.”

Kelly called for the expansion of background checks for gun purchases; allowing the Centers for Disease Control and other public health organizations to study gun violence, which the NRA has blocked; a new gun trafficking law; and a “careful and civil conversation” on assault weapons ban and prohibition on the sale of high-capacity ammunition clips.

“My wife would not have been sitting here if we had better background checks,” Kelly said.

As the hearing unfolded, Democratic and Republican lawmakers pushed their own ideological viewpoints as they questioned witnesses.

While LaPierre and the NRA have called for armed security at the nation’s schools — and other pro-gun groups have urged giving guns to teachers — Feinstein said this position is impractical.

“We can’t have a totally armed society,” said Feinstein, admitting the whole topic is a difficult one “because people have such fixed positions.”

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who supports the assault weapons ban, said failure to include prohibitions of guns as part of any new legislation was nonsensical.

“Not including guns when discussing mass killings is like not including cigarettes we’re talking about lung cancer,” Schumer said.

But Republican Sens. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, a former U.S. attorney, and John Cornyn of Texas, returned again to the GOP mantra — that the Obama administration, especially the Justice Department, is failing to prosecute offenders under current gun laws, so why are new laws needed?

Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) called for expansion of background checks for gun buyers, but he did not endorse an assault weapons ban being pushed by Feinsten, who is also a committee member. Feinstein will hold her own subcommittee hearing to review that proposal, which is strongly opposed by the NRA and gun owner groups.

Leahy also said that the right to buy and keep guns, as provided for in the Second Amendment, will remain in place.

“I have introduced a measure to provide law enforcement agencies with stronger tools against illegal gun trafficking,” Leahy said in his statement. “Others have proposed restrictions on military-style weapons and the size of ammunition clips. Others have proposed modifications to the background check systems to keep guns out of the wrong hands, while not unnecessarily burdening law-abiding citizens.”

Leahy called the expansion of background checks to include private transfers and gun-show purchases “a simple matter of common sense.”

“If we can all agree that criminals and those adjudicated as mentally ill should not buy firearms, why should we not try to plug the loopholes in the law that allow them to buy guns without background checks? It is a simple matter of common sense,” Leahy said.

But Leahy, who represents largely rural Vermont, noted that he remains committed to protecting the rights of gun owners while calling for new safeguards to “become a safer and more [secure] society.”

“Americans have the right to self-defense and to have guns in their homes to protect their families. No one can or will take those rights or our guns away,” Leahy said. “But lives are at risk when responsible people fail to stand up for laws that will keep guns out of the hands of those who will use them to commit mass murder.”

Leahy’s views are similar to those of other Democrats from pro-gun states in the West and Midwest, some of whom face reelection in 2014.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) and other Democratic leaders want Leahy to move a gun-control bill through his committee that can reach the Senate floor by late February or early March.

The leadership wants to see the bill include universal background checks at a minimum. That would allow Feinstein and other pro-gun control Democrats to offer amendments to expand the legislation, including an assault weapons ban. Democrats up for reelection in 2014 in red states could then go on record opposing the assault weapons ban, if they so chose, while still supporting the background checks measure.

Reid has already stated that he will not move a bill through the Senate that cannot get House support. And House support for an assault weapons ban is very unlikely.