Vice President Joe Biden sat down with NBC Connecticut's Keisha Grant about President Obama's executive action that tackles gun control in the United States.
The vice president stressed that the executive action does not take away the rights from lawful gun owners and gun buyers but instead keeps guns out of the hands of the wrong people.
"It's something that haunts you," the vice president said about the Sandy Hook massacre. "It's the idea of those beautiful little babies in those classrooms-- like dolls, discarded... It seems like yesterday."
Biden told NBC Connecticut that this executive action was not new but instead the last of several executive orders instituted by the president three years ago when the attack happened. Biden said he created a 40 point proposal that he and the community were excited about but was ultimately shot down.
"It's not like we waited," Biden said. "We moved."
" It quite frankly surprised me that so few were ready to step up," Biden said about his Republican and Democratic colleagues. "After giving them every chance to do something the president decided we can't wait any longer for these initiatives."
Biden insisted that as a gun owner himself, the executive action was not an example of the government overreaching as critics have said. He asked if someone who is schizophrenic or recently out of jail for violence should be able to buy a gun.
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"Under our constitution you have a right to own a gun," Biden said. "Unless you are mentally incapable, unless you have a criminal record, unless you have done bad things that we cant trust you with owning a gun."
The vice president pointed out that since Connecticut's Gov. Malloy passed laws on gun control that the state has seen "significantly" fewer gun deaths.
He explained that the new action will require background checks that will be available 24 hours a day to determine if someone has a criminal record when they buy a gun. The action is to avoid unlawful gun owners from "slipping through the cracks."
"What does that have to do with the second amendment right of owning a gun?" Biden asked.
Biden called Republican criticisms "silly."
"In this is a case, the more the American people learn what we're doing and not doing, the more support (the action will get)," Biden stated.
