Las Vegas (CNN) Bernie Sanders says he wants to talk -- at length -- about guns.

Just not now.

Two days after a white man walked into a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina, and killed nine people, the Vermont senator and presidential candidate took a cautious approach on gun control Friday when speaking with reporters after an event in Las Vegas.

"I think the people of Vermont understand that guns in Vermont are different than guns in Chicago or guns in Los Angeles," Sanders said, telling the assembled journalists that he thinks "it is wrong" when people are "in some cases suicidal and in some cases homicidal" are "still being able to purchase guns."

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Sanders, saying his home state of Vermont has "zero gun control," acknowledged that different parts of the country have different outlooks on guns.

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