'Shame' was the word of the day after the U.S. Senate failed to pass gun control legislation yesterday. A spectator in the gallery yelled out 'Shame on you!' while President Obama referred to the vote as 'pretty shameful' and Rep. Gabby Giffords wrote 'Shame on them' in an op-ed about the senators.
President Barack Obama puts his arm around former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D) of Arizona before speaking about the defeat of measures to reduce gun violence, at the White House Rose Garden, April 17. President Obama called the votes 'pretty shameful,' echoing the cry of 'Shame on you!' heard in the gallery immediately after the vote, and echoed in turn by Representative Giffords' editorial published this morning.
Manuel Balce Ceneta / AP
EnlargeSenate Republicans and a small band of rural-state Democrats scuttled the most far-reaching gun control legislation in two decades Wednesday, rejecting tighter background checks for buyers and a ban on assault weapons as they spurned pleas from families of victims of last winter's school massacre in Newtown, Conn.
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Survivors of the shootings watched from the spectator galleries above the Senate floor. "Shame on you," shouted one, Patricia Maisch, who was present two years ago when a gunman in Tucson, Ariz., killed six and wounded 13 others, including former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.
"This effort isn't over," President Barack Obama vowed at the White House moments after the defeat on one of his top domestic priorities. Surrounded by Ms. Giffords and Newtown relatives, he said opponents of the legislation in both parties "caved to the pressure" of special interests and called it "a pretty shameful day for Washington."
A ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines also fell in a series of showdown votes. A bid to loosen restrictions on concealed weapons carried across state lines was rejected, as well.
That last vote marked a rare defeat for the National Rifle Association on a day it generally triumphed over Obama, gun control advocates and many of the individuals whose lives have been affected by mass shootings in Connecticut and elsewhere.
Gun control advocates, including Obama, had voiced high hopes for significant action after the Newtown shootings. But the lineup of possible legislation gradually dwindled to a focus on background checks, and in the end even that could not win Senate passage. Chances in the Republican-controlled House had seemed even slimmer.
By agreement of Senate leaders, a 60-vote majority was required for approval of any of the provisions brought to a vote.
The vote on the background check was 54-46, well short of the 60 votes needed to advance. Forty-one Republicans and five Democrats voted to reject the plan.
The proposed ban on assault weapons commanded 40 votes; the bid to block sales of high capacity ammunition clips drew 46.
The NRA-backed proposal on concealed carry permits got 57.
In the hours before the key vote on background checks, Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., bluntly accused the National Rifle Association of making false claims about the expansion of background checks that he and Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., were backing.
"Where I come from in West Virginia, I don't know how to put the words any plainer than this: That is a lie. That is simply a lie," he said, accusing the organization of telling its supporters that friends, neighbors and some family members would need federal permission to transfer ownership of firearms to one another.
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