国际英语新闻:Feature: Former U.S. Vice President Biden takes aim at gun violence at LA campaign rally

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- "I'll tell you, I am the only one who has ever beaten the NRA and they know I can beat them again."

Joe Biden pointed his finger at National Rifle Association (NRA), a gun rights advocacy group in the United States, which lobbied for and against firearms legislations over decades.

The former U.S. vice president under Barak Obama and now a top-tier Democratic presidential contender paid a quick campaign stop to the Los Angeles Trade Technical College campus in downtown LA on Thursday and pledged to fight with gun violence.

Biden was cheered by a group of more than 700 supporters, waving a sea of Biden's signature blue and red campaign signs and chanting, "We want Joe!"

The rally was held the same day that yet another fatal school shooting took place earlier that morning that rocked a tranquil Southern California community just a few kilometers away at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, a city of Los Angeles county.

Biden has long been an outspoken proponent of gun control, especially for assault weapons and other guns. He said he must begin his speech "on a somber note" to commemorate the shooting.

The Saugus shooting left three students critically wounded and two dead. The 16-year old male suspect is a student who is described by a neighbor to local media as "always having a smile on his face."

Biden recounted that one of the wounded kids being carried out on a stretcher this morning had been heard to say, "What kind of a world is this ...?"

"What kind of world is this?" Biden demanded of the crowd. "This has become intolerable!"

He lamented that Americans now send their children to school and the first thing they teach them is how to avoid being shot.

"What does that say about our soul? What does that say about who we are?" he asked his supporters.

He talked of his visit to Sandy Hook, where "...All those young children were murdered, their bodies piled on top of one another..."

The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, which occurred in Newtown of Connecticut state in 2012, stunned the nation after a gunman killed 20 children and six adults. The attacker, who killed his mother prior to the rampage, also died in the massacre.

"The generation with the greatest sense of anxiety in America are the so-called Gen Z children between ages of 7 and 19," Biden told the crowd. "Their greatest concern is that they will be shot in school. Not just here, it's all across America. It's sickening," he said.

While accusing Republicans of being "afraid of the NRA," Biden said, "I promise you, as I promised those people in Sandy Hook, if I am president, I guarantee I am going to beat these guys!"

"I'm so tired of people saying they will 'pray' for murdered children, when we need to do something about it!" he said.

Isabella Drudge, a 16-year old high school student who came to see where Biden stood on gun control, said, "I don't want to be afraid of going to school."

"We didn't have this kind of senseless violence when I was teaching," said a 70-year-old retired LA school teacher who gave her name as Mary.

"Our children's safety and future is far more important than someone's so-called right to carry a gun," she noted.