Vice President Joe Biden, in somber, highly personal remarks to a gala fundraising dinner for the families of the victims of the Sandy Hook school shootings, lamented the gun control gridlock in Washington that he partly blamed for the Orlando terrorist massacre over the weekend.

Biden told the crowd gathered at the Andrew W. Mellon auditorium in Washington that he and President Obama have talked about the shooting that killed 20 first-graders back in December 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary as one of the most painful moments of their tenure.