Today’s Senate vote failed to earn the 60 required votes needed to pass, 54 in favor and 46 against.
The measure — painstakingly crafted by the bipartisan duo of Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) — was seen as the key to passing the first legislation in decades to address the sorts of mass slaughters that so recently horrified the country in Newtown, Conn., where 20 children and six educators were gunned down at an elementary school, and in Auroro, Colo., where 12 people were killed in a theater.
The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake on the President Obama’s reaction:
“Instead of supporting this compromise, the gun lobby and their allies willfully lied about this bill,” Obama said. ”They claimed this bill would create a federal gun registry. … Unfortunately this pattern of untruths about this legislation served its purpose.”
Jonathan Bernstein says in the Washington Post that the push is not yet done:
It may sound trite to say it, but it really does come down to whether those who really care about it can sustain their effort over time, build support, and be ready with consensus legislation when the time comes. That wasn’t the case this time, as we found out this week. But as brutal as today was those who care about gun violence, the overall process can still be a step forward — if people keep working at it.
Twitter is ablaze with reaction:
Former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords ?tweeted @GabbyGiffords:
Senate ignored will of the people & rejected background checks. Im not giving up. Constituents will know they obeyed gun lobby and not them.
Kirsten Gillibrand, Senator of New York @SenGillibrand
W/90% support, it’s absurd that we were unable to summon the political will to pass universal background checks. The Senate truly is broken.
And Episcopal priest Laura Toepfer ?@HeyToepfer
They sang a love song when marriage equality passed in NZ. What song should we sing to mark amendments failed in Senate?