Forty-five Senators Support the Mass Murder of Americans

by Sunnyjane

  Second Amendment Rewrite: A well funded NRA, being necessary to the job security of gutless Republicans and Democrats who believe in the right to massacre Americans, shall not be infringed.

One day before a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer was gunned down by a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings, forty-five U.S. Senators decided it was better to let Americans be murdered than to have gun purchasers suffer the inconvenience of a five-minute background check.  And let us be clear: this was a vote of sheer cowardice, having nothing to do with their alleged Second Amendment convictions.  [Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) also voted No, but for procedural reasons that will allow him to bring the amendment back up at a later date.]

As for those Second Amendment convictions, it is worth noting that forty-two of the senators who voted No have received campaign funding from the NRA.  I know; shocking, isn't it?

A Shameful Day: Spitting on the Graves of Newtown Victims

President Obama:  The gun lobby and its allies willfully lied about the bill. 

A grim and angry President, a distressed Vice President, a former Representative who is a  gun violence victim, and anguished family members of the Newtown dead stood in the Rose Garden after the Senate vote that defeated the  Manchin-Toomey Amendment.  This watered-down-to-weak-tea amendment, which was introduced as a compromise to satisfy pro-gun senators, only provided background checks for commercial gun sales; private sales would have required no background checks.

The remainder of President Obama's statement from the above caption said, They claimed it would create some sort of Big Brother gun registry, even though the bill did the opposite.  

The President went on to give a well-deserved smack-down to Sen. Rand Paul, who had insolently referred to the Newtown parents lobbying Capitol Hill as props:  It's a dog and pony show, it's a parade, it's theatrics.  

President Obama:  I've heard folks say that having the families of victims lobby for this legislation was somehow misplaced–a 'prop,' somebody called it.  Are they serious?  Do they really think that thousands of families whose lives have been shattered by gun violence don't have a right to weigh in on this issue?  Do they think their emotions, their loss is not relevant to this debate? 

Two other amendments -- a ban on the sale of military-style weapons and a limit on the size of ammunition clips -- both failed.  

To register your disgust with the spineless senators who voted No on the gun bill(s), tweet them!
    
Crackling and Cackling Static from NRA Lackeys 
 

Fearful of further soiling their skid-marked Fruit of the Looms, the forty-five senators who voted against the amendment defied the will of ninety percent of Americans who want to reduce their chances of being killed or wounded by gun violence.   Even seventy-five percent of card-carrying NRA members favor commonsense gun reform.

After Arkansas GOP state Rep. Nate Bell tweeted that Boston liberals spent the night cowering in their homes wishing they had an AR-15 with a hi-capacity magazine, Joseph Farah of Wing Nut Daily World Net Daily took up that mantra, writing the systematically disarmed residents of the Boston and Cambridge area cowered in their homes and hid in their closets in fear of one armed and dangerous terrorist presumed to have been involved in the Boston Marathon bombing.

Frighteningly, the Boston Bombing suspects possessed what police called an arsenal of weapons, which included a M-4 carbine assault rifle, a weapon similar to those used by American forces in Afghanistan.  Information to date suggests, but does not confirm, that these weapons were not obtained legally, as the younger brother was not old enough to obtain a gun permit and the elder brother was not on record as having a permit.
 
Appropriately named GOP Senator Jeff Flake obviously believes that under the First Amendment, he has the right to lie shamelessly to the relatives of shooting victims.  He wrote to the mother of a gun violence victim that While we may not agree on every solution, strengthening background checks is something we agree on.  He voted No.  And when asked about his duplicity, he replied That's the beauty of a six-year term.  

Reactions to the Vote that Defeated Gun Reform

Public reactions to the irresponsible, anti-American vote in the Senate can be seen in this excellent video: The Senate "decided to do nothing."  We've had enough gun violence.  "Vote them out."   H/T to GottaLaff at The Political Carnival.

Editorial response from the media was brutal: cowardly ... cowed into submission ... more shameful and dysfunctional than we've known ... revealed more than a "do-nothing" body ... a sanctuary for too many cowards...

 End Note

It is past time for sound reasoning and commonsense to rule the gun reform debate instead of special interests and the contrariness of the ten percent in our country who only care about hanging on to their right to have as many weapons available to them -- and to people who have no business with guns -- as possible.

At the Second Continental Congress in 1776, Dr. Lyman Hall arrived in Philadelphia as a representative from Georgia.   At the direction of his constituents, he voted No on the proposal to fight for independence from England.   However, he later changed his vote to Yes, saying to John Adams,  I remembered something I'd once read, "that a representative owes the People not only his industry, but his judgment, and he betrays them if he sacrifices it to their opinion."  Rather wryly, he then told Adams, It was written by Edmund Burke, a member of the British Parliament. 
     
When it comes to judgment, integrity, and doing what is right for all Americans, we could learn some good lessons from people like Dr. Lyman Hall.