Expanded Background Checks Won’t Pass

by evanmcmurry

Welp, background checks was the best we could do, it was pretty pathetic (as we had to loosen some other gun restrictions to get them) and we still couldn’t do it.

Despite 90% of support of the public, including overwhelming majorities from Republicans and independents, a compromise from two Senators with A ratings from the NRA, lobbying from families of the Newtown shooting, and lobbying from Gabby Giffords, a congressional colleague shot in the head, background checks won’t even get an up or down vote in the Senate.

Sargeant deserves a full quote here:

If Manchin-Toomey dies, there also will be a lot of chatter to the effect that this was inevitable, that the NRA’s grip on Congress is invincible, and that it was naïve to imagine that anything could happen, even after Newtown. This is all just wrong, and indeed, it lets culpable Senators off the hook. If the proposal goes down, it will be because a few Senators did the wrong thing. It was not at all inevitable that a half dozen Senators who were genuinely undecided voted one way and not the other. The death of this proposal will be on them.