Yesterday the Senate voted down every common sense gun safety measure brought up for a vote. Scared of what the NRA would do to them in their next election, 54 Senators voted not to close gaping loopholes that allow terrorists, murderers, rapists, and other criminals from buying weapons at gun shows and online without background checks.
The NRA has flat-out lied about what's contained in this legislation. They know that this was carefully crafted to allow weapons to be passed from family member to family member, or neighbor to neighbor, without background checks. But they managed to use their propaganda machine to scare gullible people into believing otherwise. The Senators who voted against this also know what was contained in the bill, and they knew the NRA was lying about its contents to make people jittery about whether the government was going to create a national gun registry (even though the bill specifically forbids it), or whether Obama was "going to come and get their guns." Think about it, people... there are millions of homes in America. How many troops would the President need to pull this off? Duh.
Four Democrats sided with the 50 Republican Senators who voted this down. The Huffington Post has a list here of the Senators who voted against this common sense legislation in order to save their political hides. These are the folks we need to make sure get voted out in the next election cycle. If the Senate can't vote for legislation to keep terrorists and criminals from being able to buy any gun they want carte blanche, then we need to change the people who make up the Senate. We need to vote in people who give a damn about those kids and teachers who were killed at Sandy Hook. We need to vote in people who care more about doing what's right than saving their own careers. Only then will the people who have been killed by those who should never have been able to buy and use guns get any justice.
