In the Federal District Court in Bridgeport, Connecticut, families of the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre, in which 26 children and school staff were murdered, are seeking an order that gun manufacturers be found negligent for selling military-style weapons to civilians. A divided US Senate blocked rival election-year plans to curb guns, eight days after the horror of Orlando's mass shooting. And in the Senate, votes for tighter background checks on prospective gun buyers and a ban on sales to terror suspects bit the dust, even as the 49 victims of the Orlando massacre were still being buried. The manufacturers' breathtaking cynicism is on full display in the Bridgeport case. Having successfully hounded Congress in 2005 for a law to shield the manufacturers from liability when third parties "criminally or unlawfully misuse" their guns, manufacturers are arguing they are protected from a bid by 10 Sandy Hook families to hold them accountable as providers of what has become the mass murderers' weapon of choice – the assault rifle.

And on Monday the Senate revealed just whose side it was on – yes, of course, the manufacturers should be protected from such frivolous actions; but, good God no, why should this august body act to limit gun sales, or, heaven forbid, maybe even head off a massacre or two? Congress is out of step: Senator Chris Murphy after the vote. Credit:AP Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat, browbeat the Senate's Republican majority to agree to Monday's votes by talking non-stop for 15hrs last week. That's called a filibuster. But the Republican's brought counter proposals, crafted with the help of the National Rifle Association (NRA), and consequently all four votes failed to secure a necessary 60 votes to clear a procedural hurdle. From left: Senators Richard Durbin, Richard Blumenthal, Chris Murphy, and Charles Schumer listen to Minority Leader Harry Reid (centre) on Monday. Credit:AP

Whereas the Democrats wanted tighter background checks, the Republicans wanted greater resources to prosecute violation of the existing background-checking arrangement. And whereas the Democrats wanted to bar those who are named on the FBI terror watch list from buying weapons; the Republicans came up with a sure fire way to make the Democrat proposal unworkable – put the sale of a gun to a suspect on hold for 72hrs, in which the Attorney- General would have to go before a judge to show probable cause to deny the sale. Bob Civil reacts in front of a New York memorial for victims of the Orlando nightclub shooting. Credit:AP I don't think democracy allows for this Congress to be so out of step with the American public for very long. Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy The votes were along party lines, save for two Republican senators who, facing tight re-election contests in November, supported the Democrat proposals.

Democrats later condemned the NRA's "vice-like grip" on members of congress. And though Murphy, the Connecticut senator whose turf includes Sandy Hook, said he was not surprised by the vote, he professed to being mortified. "I don't think democracy allows for this Congress to be so out of step with the American public for very long." Filibuster: Chris Murphy on the floor of the Senate during the filibuster demanding a vote on gun control measures. Credit:C-Span/AP Florida Senator, Democrat Bill Nelson, wondered aloud about how he could return to the state in which the horror of the Orlando massacre was so fresh in people's minds, asking: "What am I going to tell 49 grieving families? What am I going to tell the families of those [who] are still in the hospital fighting for their lives?" And as the Senate charade played out, the families of victims of gun violence, some of them in tears, watched from the public gallery. Poor people – didn't they know that the Senate had behaved like this after the Sandy Hook massacre? Had they forgotten that congress voted the same way after the San Bernardino massacre in December 2015, in which 14 people were killed and 22 were seriously injured? But as reported by The New York Times cynicism abounds: "Partisanship and the power of the gun lobby played a large role… Democrats structured their bills in a way that was almost certain to repel Republicans; while Republicans responded with bills equally distasteful to Democrats".

As the families of the Sandy Hook victims looked on in the Bridgeport court, James Vogts, an attorney for Remington Arms, told Judge Barbara Bellis: "A personal injury case in front of a jury is not the place for a new policy to emerge on who should own firearms and what type of firearms". The killer in that case, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, used a Bushmaster XM15-E2S rifle, which had been purchased legally by his mother – who he also shot. But what puts the fear of God into the manufacturers is the particular argument on which the families' case hangs. That is, they are not arguing that the single sale of a gun to the mother was negligent; instead their point is that in making a military-grade weapon and marketing it to civilians for years, the manufacturers and the retailers have been negligent. Josh Koskoff, representing the victim families, told the court: "A weapon that was designed to be used in combat by military to assault and kill enemies of war in the fields of Vietnam and more recently in the streets of Fallujah, and there it was lying not on the battlefield but on the floor of Vicki Soto's first-grade classroom." Soto died a hero, attempting to protect her pupils at Sandy Hook.

The judge has set a hearing date for April 2018 – but that depends on her ruling on Monday's application by which the manufacturers are claiming that Congress put them beyond the law. As the Connecticut judge heard arguments on making gun manufacturers accountable, the US Supreme Court declined, without giving reasons, to hear a challenge to a Connecticut law, enacted in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre, that bans the sale of many semiautomatic rifles. Follow Fairfax World on Facebook Follow Fairfax World on Twitter