Gutless Check

On Wednesday, Republicans in the U.S. Senate forced a 60 vote supermajority on gun regulation legislation.  The compromise bipartisan bill to expand background checks lost by 5 votes, though it had a majority.

In response, President Obama called it a shameful day in Washington, in an angry statement in the White House rose garden, surrounded by parents of gun violence victims, and gun violence victims themselves, like former Member of Congress Gabrielle Giffords.  He said the NRA and other violence promoters  “willfully lied about the bill” in order to scare gutless senators into opposing even a straight vote on it.

 Gabrielle Giffords wrote an oped published in the New York Times Thursday edition:

"I watch TV and read the papers like everyone else. We know what we’re going to hear: vague platitudes like “tough vote” and “complicated issue.” I was elected six times to represent southern Arizona, in the State Legislature and then in Congress. I know what a complicated issue is; I know what it feels like to take a tough vote. This was neither. These senators made their decision based on political fear and on cold calculations about the money of special interests like the National Rifle Association..."

"Speaking is physically difficult for me. But my feelings are clear: I’m furious. I will not rest until we have righted the wrong these senators have done, and until we have changed our laws so we can look parents in the face and say: We are trying to keep your children safe. We cannot allow the status quo — desperately protected by the gun lobby so that they can make more money by spreading fear and misinformation — to go on."

"I am asking every reasonable American to help me tell the truth about the cowardice these senators demonstrated. I am asking for mothers to stop these lawmakers at the grocery store and tell them: You’ve lost my vote. I am asking activists to unsubscribe from these senators’ e-mail lists and to stop giving them money. I’m asking citizens to go to their offices and say: You’ve disappointed me, and there will be consequences."

"Mark my words: if we cannot make our communities safer with the Congress we have now, we will use every means available to make sure we have a different Congress, one that puts communities’ interests ahead of the gun lobby’s. To do nothing while others are in danger is not the American way."