WASHINGTON — Speaking just miles from the Newtown, Conn., school massacre site, a fiery Vice President Joe Biden yesterday said the nation’s leaders must show some backbone and enact stricter gun controls.
“It’s not too much to ask the political establishment in this country, the members of Congress, Democrats and Republicans . . . to show some political courage,” Biden told a gun conference at Western Connecticut University.
Biden is leading President Obama’s gun-control effort and explained how the president told him he didn’t have to take on the job.
“The way he said it was a reflection of the standing assumption in American politics today that this is kind of the third rail of politics, that if you take this on, somehow there will be a severe political price to pay for doing it because that’s what’s happened in the past,” Biden said.
“I say it’s unacceptable not to take this on,” he said to applause.
Biden stumped just 12 miles from Sandy Hook elementary school, where 20 children and six staffers were killed Dec. 14 by a deranged gunman. He called for background checks on all gun sales, limiting ammo, banning assault weapons, and cracking down on gun sales to criminals.
The NRA, which is fighting the effort, took out newspaper ads targeting vulnerable Senate Democrats in pro-gun states who are up for re-election in 2014.