Guncontrol, what gun control? Senate kills attempt to fix laws
WASHINGTON: Voting along party lines, US senators on Monday killed yet another attempt to fix the country’s slack gun laws, launched this time in the aftermath of the carnage in Orlando.
They voted down two competing proposals, one each by a Democrat and a Republican, to prevent suspected terrorists such as the Orlando shooter, Omar Mateen, from buying guns.
Mateen gunned down 49 people at a gay nightclub.
The senators also defeated one measure extending background checks to gun fairs, exhibitions and online sales, and another that proposed to address the issue of gun violence as a mental health problem.
President Barack Obama denounced the vote, tweeting, “Gun violence requires more than moments of silence. It requires action. In failing that test, the Senate failed the American people.”
“What am I going to tell 49 grieving families? I am going to tell them the NRA won again,”said Senator Bill Nelson, a Democrat representing Florida. The National Rifle Association (NRA) is a powerful pro-gun lobby that worked to defeat these measures, and others before, dubbing them an assault on the right to bear arms.
Democrats and Republicans blamed each other for the failure to pass the measures, but few, if any, expected them to pass, holding both parties equally accountable.
The New York Times noted that Democrats, who favour gun reforms, “were eager (after Orlando) to press their advantage and were not about to make it easy for Republicans”.
The result: the same as before. An attempt to prevent terrorists from getting guns after the killing of 14 people in San Bernardino last December met with the same outcome.
And an attempt to extend background checks after the horrific killing of 20 first-graders in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012 met the same fate despite the outrage felt all around.