Former Vice President Joe Biden said there was a "rational way to deal with the Second Amendment" during a campaign address in Nevada Tuesday.
Biden recounted the massacres in Las Vegas (2017) and Newtown, Conn. (2012) that have prompted calls in the Democratic Party for stricter gun control laws. He said it's hard to be in Nevada and not think of the Las Vegas shooting, in which more people died and were injured than in any other shooting in American history.
"All the lives that were lost, all the families that were [forever] changed, created by senseless gun violence," he said. "They're moments you never forget ... I just want to say to you that we don't have to have—there's a Second Amendment, but there's a rational way to deal with the Second Amendment."
Biden, like the rest of the 2020 Democratic field, sharply differs from President Donald Trump and the Republican Party, who have made protecting Second Amendment rights a cornerstone of their platform.
Former President Barack Obama has cited inaction on gun control as one of the biggest frustrations of his administration, and Biden has frequently invoked his friendship and work with Obama on the campaign trail.
Biden quickly established himself as the early frontrunner in the crowded 2020 Democratic primary field after entering the race late last month. He supported the assault weapons ban in the 1990s and said in 2016 that opposition to gun control "borders on irrational."