Former Vice President Joe Biden slammed his Democratic presidential primary opponent Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) for his record of voting against certain gun reform measures.
Biden touted his work “helping lead the fight” to pass the Brady Bill that created a system of background checks in a speech Thursday in Las Vegas.
“We don’t grant that kind of immunity to any other major industry. Not the tobacco industry. Not the pharmaceutical industry. Just gun manufacturers. It’s immoral,” Biden said, according to a copy of his prepared remarks.
“And I think it’s one of the worst votes Senator Sanders has ever taken,” Biden added, referencing Sanders’s vote against the bill in the 1990s.
Biden similarly hit Sanders with an ad Thursday, seemingly going after Sanders’s vote for a bill in 2003 and 2005 that effectively protected gun manufacturers against lawsuits.
The campaign ad said the video is from an interview with Sanders on The Thom Hartmann Radio Show the morning of the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting.
“I don’t know that you hold a gun manufacturer responsible for what obviously a deranged person does,” Sanders said in the interview clip used in the Biden ad.
Michael Bloomberg similarly hit Sanders over his record on gun reform Thursday, accusing the National Rifle Association (NRA) of having helped Sanders “get elected.”
Sanders campaign adviser Jeff Weaver said in a statement the NRA “never endorsed” Sanders and the senator has never taken “a dime of their money.”
“In fact, he lost his 1988 Congressional race because he backed an assault weapons ban. But even after that, Sanders maintained his opposition to these weapons of war,” Weaver added.
An official from the Sanders campaign was not immediately available for additional comment in response to Biden’s comments.