Standing alongside tearful families of the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre, a seething-mad President Obama lashed out against lawmakers who opposed a bill that would have expanded background checks for gun buyers, saying today marked a "shameful day for Washington."
"There were no coherent arguments as to why we wouldn't do this. It came down to politics," the president said in a Rose Garden statement shortly after the Senate defeated the bipartisan Manchin-Toomey amendment.
The president said lawmakers who opposed the measure "caved" to pressure from the gun lobby and its allies who "willfully lied about the bill."
"A minority in the United States Senate decided it wasn't worth it," he said. "They worried that that vocal minority of gun-owners would come after them in future elections. They worried that the gun lobby would spend a lot of money and paint them as anti-Second Amendment. And obviously a lot of Republicans had that fear, but Democrats had that fear, too. And so they caved to the pressure, and they started looking for an excuse, any excuse, to vote no."
I think it will turn around and bite them on the ass, the pusillanimous Senators who feared voter retribution. Since most people in the country agree with the need for better gun control, some of these guys will pay in the next election.
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