Joe Biden: 'Newtown pricked US conscience'

US Vice-President Joe Biden has said the image of six-year-old children "riddled with bullet holes" has pricked the consciousness of the nation.

Speaking ahead of a meeting with the National Rifle Association, the country's top gun lobby, Mr Biden said the reaction to a massacre of 20 children and six adults at a primary school in Newtown, Connecticut was unlike anything he had seen.

Mr Biden, who is leading a White House effort to generate new policy ideas for gun control, said he would send his recommendations to the president on Tuesday.