The first anniversary of the massacre of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School weighs heavily, above all, for the unfathomable nature of the crime and unfathomable grief of the families. Adding to that weight, though, is the demoralization over the fact that the massacre has not led to any broad national policy response to the problem of gun violence. If there is any doubt that this failure had exacerbated the pain of the families, consider this haunting line from one of the reports on the April failure of the post-massacre gun-law reform bill: “Mr. Obama hugged the brother of one victim, Daniel Barden, who was 7, and told him to take care of his mother, who was sobbing quietly.”

Since April, there has been all manner of rationalization and second-guessing about how this failure happened. The administration should never let itself get sidetracked by the gun issue to begin with. The president should have done more to push for the legislation, which was dubbed Manchin-Toomey. Or perhaps he should have done less. Maybe, though the Newtown families fell in line with the law enforcement and gun control groups who wanted expanded background checks, the bill should have focused more narrowly on reforms that directly addressed what had happened in Newtown.

In the coming New York Times Magazine, Robert Draper does us all a service by breaking through some of the second-guessing in order to analyze just how the National Rifle Association and other gun-rights groups managed to block a measure that polls showed were supported by some 90 percent of Americans. His conclusion is not so different from the one I reached, in slightly more optimistic tones, last spring: As confounding as the NRA’s win was, there’s reason to believe that, in “unsteady little increments,” its influence is being reduced.

However, even Draper’s deeply-reported look at the NRA runs the risk of diverting attention from this simple fact: Last April, 100 senators had the opportunity to vote on sensible gun-law reforms that many Newtown families were pleading for. And 46 of them decided to vote against it, which in the contemporary Senate was enough to kill the bill. Each vote counts the same, but here, for posterity’s sake, are some “no’s” that stood out in particular:

Kelly Ayotte

The first-term Republican from New Hampshire is a former prosecutor and state attorney general and thus well acquainted with the porousness of gun laws, which require background checks at licensed dealerships to screen for past felonies or dangerous mental illness, but not at the gun shows or private sales where an estimated 40 percent of transactions occur. Voting for background checks would hardly hurt Ayotte’s general election chances in New Hampshire, a state Obama won by six points against a part-time New Hampshire resident, which has prompted speculation that her vote was cast to protect her prospects for a national GOP ticket. Confronted after the vote by Erica Lafferty, the daughter of the slain Sandy Hook principal, Ayotte gave a dissembling explanation that sent Lafferty striding from the room.