Senate fails Newtown, common sense: Our view

The Editorial Board | USA TODAY

Four months after the massacre of 20 first-graders and six educators in Newtown, Conn., the Senate responded Wednesday — by rejecting every reasonable effort to make these and other shootings less likely.

Expanded background checks? A ban on assault weapons? Limits on high-capacity magazines? No, no and no.

Where does that leave the nation? Exactly where it has been. A place where criminals and crazy people can too easily get their hands on firearms capable of inflicting mass slaughter. A place where movie theaters and elementary schools become scenes of unimaginable tragedy. A place where 86 people a day are killed by guns.

It's hard to exaggerate what a shameful display the Senate votes were, or what a distortion of democracy. Moments before her assault weapons ban was voted down, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., made an emotional appeal to her colleagues to "show some guts." If only. Instead, too many showed their fealty to, or fear of retribution from, the National Rifle Association and other gun groups.

The cravenness of the votes was most apparent on the compromise proposal — sponsored by Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Pat Toomey, R-Pa. — to expand background checks. Their amendment was an attempt to shut a huge loophole that routinely allows people who should never be able to buy guns legally to get them, with no questions asked, at gun shows or online.

Of all the proposals the Senate took up Wednesday, this would likely have been the most effective. It was gun-safety groups' top priority. Opinion polls showed it had the backing of up to 90% of Americans, including 74% of NRA members. Yet after an avalanche of misinformation by opponents, it fell six votes short of the 60 votes needed for passage under the Senate's procedural rules.

Pundits immediately cast the vote as a huge defeat for President Obama, and that it was. It was also a defeat for the Newtown families who came to Washington to lobby, only to be callously dismissed as "props" by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. Most important, it was a defeat for common sense and public safety.

Joined by the families at the White House after the vote, Obama vowed to fight on, and he has history on his side. This is a long game. President Reagan and his press secretary, Jim Brady, were shot by a madman in 1981. It wasn't until 1993 that Congress finally passed the Brady law to require background checks on gun sales.

In the wake of Newtown, several states have moved to adopt tougher gun laws. Those restrictions should provide useful data on what works. But federal legislation is the most important, and if advocates of better gun laws want to win in Washington, they'll have to take a lesson from their opponents.

The gun lobby succeeds because it has more members, more money and more intensity. If gun-safety advocates want to win, they'll have to get better organized. They'll have to be savvier about the nation's urban-rural cultural divide over guns. And they'll have to convince wavering lawmakers that there's a political price to be paid for opposing sensible gun restrictions such as the ones defeated Wednesday.

This editorial has been updated to match Thursday's print version.