U.S. Senate’s NRA caucus blocks legislation to require background checks on more gun sales

A bipar­ti­san pro­pos­al to require back­ground checks on the sale of firearms at gun shows and over the Inter­net has failed to advance in the Unit­ed States Sen­ate after being suc­cess­ful­ly fil­i­bus­tered by forty-one Repub­li­cans and four Democrats.

By a vote of fifty-four to forty-six (with Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Har­ry Reid vot­ing nay so that he has the abil­i­ty to bring up the leg­is­la­tion again lat­er) the Sen­ate nixed the amend­ment care­ful­ly craft­ed by Sen­a­tors Joe Manchin of West Vir­ginia and Pat Toomey of Penn­syl­va­nia to strength­en back­ground checks, an idea that pub­lic opin­ion research sug­gests around 90% of the Amer­i­can peo­ple support.

Sen­a­tors from the Pacif­ic North­west were even­ly split on the amend­ment. The roll call from our region was as fol­lows:

Vot­ing Aye: Democ­rats Pat­ty Mur­ray and Maria Cantwell (WA), Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden (OR), Jon Tester (MT)

Vot­ing Nay: Democ­rats Mark Begich (AK) and Max Bau­cus (MT); Repub­li­cans Mike Crapo and Jim Risch (ID), Lisa Murkows­ki (AK)

Begich and Bau­cus were two of the four Democ­rats who vot­ed against the amend­ment. The oth­er two Democ­rats were Mark Pry­or of Arkansas and the recent­ly elect­ed Hei­di Heitkamp of North Dakota.

As men­tioned, Har­ry Reid also vot­ed against the amend­ment after he knew what the out­come would be, so that he has the abil­i­ty to bring it back to the Sen­ate floor at a lat­er point in time. (Reid sup­ports back­ground checks and would have vot­ed aye if there had been fifty-nine oth­er aye votes).

Sev­er­al Repub­li­cans joined with the rest of the Sen­ate Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus in sup­port of the amend­ment. They were Pat Toomey of Penn­syl­va­nia, Mark Kirk of Illi­nois, Susan Collins of Maine, and sur­pris­ing­ly, John McCain of Arizona.

McCain’s Ari­zona seat­mate Jeff Flake, who the White House and activists had pre­vi­ous­ly hoped might vote in favor of the amend­ment, vot­ed nay after announc­ing he would join the Repub­li­can fil­i­buster last night.

Our friends at the PCCC are launch­ing an ad cam­paign against the four Demo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tors who failed the peo­ple of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca by join­ing in the Repub­li­can fil­i­buster to block the Manchin/Toomey pro­pos­al from mov­ing forward.

We at NPI are par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­ap­point­ed in Sen­a­tors Begich and Bau­cus for stand­ing with the Nation­al Rifle Asso­ci­a­tion (NRA) instead of the vast major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans, includ­ing respon­si­ble gun own­ers, who sup­port clos­ing the back­ground check loop­hole so that crim­i­nals can’t avoid scruti­ny by buy­ing firearms at gun shows or over the Inter­net. They had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to demon­strate polit­i­cal courage and they squan­dered that oppor­tu­ni­ty. Shame on them.