by Madhu Ramankutty
In the aftermath of the horrific shootings in Newton, CT that rocked the nation last December, it seemed that American lawmakers were finally making progress in the push for tougher gun-control legislation. In recent weeks, Senators Joe Manchin (D-W.VA) and Pat Toomey (R-PA) teamed together to create the bipartisan “Manchin-Toomey” amendment that would require background checks for commercial gun sales. This amendment, considered only a small fraction of the more-widespread legislation originally called for by the Obama administration, was voted down yesterday in a 54-46 vote, falling short of the 60 votes needed.
When President Obama spoke yesterday afternoon in the Rose Garden, he seemed justifiably angry; “All in all, this was a pretty shameful day for Washington,” he noted. The President also urged Americans to continue to fight for stricter gun laws with the same effort that the NRA opposes them. Speaking of the NRA he said, “They are better organized, they are better financed, they’ve been at it longer and they make sure to stay focused on this one issue during election time.” The President also explained that when he made phone-calls to on-the-fence voters, many of the senators could not come up with any reasonable arguments against laws that made it harder for criminals and the mentally-disabled to purchase guns. Fundamentally, these Senators voted on politics and acted on the fear that the NRA and a vocal minority of gun-owners would be foes in coming elections. But as former Representative Gabrielle Giffords so correctly put it in a New York Times op-ed this morning, this fear that Senators have of the NRA “must be nothing compared to the fear the first graders in Sandy Hook Elementary School felt as their lives ended in hail of bullets.”
What happened yesterday is both scary and sad, not only because it allows mass shootings as terrible as Sandy Hook, Aurora, Virginia Tech, and Columbine to happen more easily, but also because it shows that even when 90% of the American public supports a piece of bipartisan, reasonable, and necessary legislation, Congress still can’t pass it because it’s in bed with the NRA. In my imagination, what caused yesterday’s vote seems like it was plucked out of a sinister scene in House of Cards—envision a greasy NRA lobbyist convincing (or manipulating?) a Senator to vote against the interests of the American people in favor of his own. Anyway, perhaps the best article on yesterday’s failed vote is this one: http://www.theonion.com/articles/next-weeks-school-shooting-victims-thank-senate-fo,32094/