The right to bear cheap, unregulated arms?

Protestors demand better gun control after the Sandy Hook massacre. Photo: Flickr/Elvert Barnes

“A pretty shameful day for Washington” is how President Obama painfully labelled Wednesday, 17th April 2013, after the bipartisan state amendment, which would expand background checks on gun purchases to online sales and gun shows, as well as represent the best chance of reform on gun control laws in over a decade, was blocked by the Senate.

Sensible reform it would seem, considering it would ensure that convicted criminals and people with severe mental illnesses would be denied the opportunity to evade checks, which are required for 60% of gun purchases, by simply logging into gunbroker.com and purchasing whichever NRA supported weapon catches their eye. The reform appears so sensible that a poll in February found that 92% of Americans were for this moderate control on gun sales.

The bill itself, described by Obama as a “common sense compromise” on background checks, was drafted by a Democrat and a Republican, Joe Manchin and Pat Toomey, themselves gun owners and stubborn defenders of the Second Amendment, which in itself demonstrates the mild and unimposing nature of the suggested reform.

The palpable frustration in Obama’s stern condemnation of the block is understandable: 46 senators decided to misuse their representative position by denying the majority of the American people limited reform. The reform may have had the effect of ever so slightly piecing back together the feeling of safety for themselves and their children that the American people had, before it was shattered by the news that Adam Lanza had released 154 rounds of ammunition, brutally ending the lives of 20 children in Sandy Hook Elementary.

But with such commanding support for a Bill requiring 60% to pass through the Senate, how did it manage to fall at the first hurdle? All signs point towards misrepresentation and propaganda from the National Rifle Association. Following the Sandy Hook shooting they raised record amounts of money in anticipation of the rise in pressure on politicians to do something about the gun laws, as well as threatening “political retribution” against any that voted for the Toomey-Manchin proposal.

It may be worth pointing out that, in the past, the NRA had supported limited increases on background checks, but evidently the extremist nature of the lobbyists has unexplainably managed to move even further right. Obama stated plainly that the lobbyists “wilfully lied” about the Bill, spreading fear that a Big-Brother-style registry would be the outcome, allowing the Government to pry on private business, thus having the effect of making any senator who voted for the amendment appear as an authoritarian imposer on free will and particularly the Second Amendment. Against the backdrop of mass manipulation it barely seems beneficial for the voice of reason to point out that the Bill outlawed the use of a registry all along. It seems that the dirty tactics employed by the NRA have no bounds, and what use is a senator in a fight against an influential group capable of putting all morals to one side in the pursuit of its single-minded goal?

However it’s not all doom and gloom, as Obama said, this is just round 1. Mark Barden, whose son Daniel was killed far before his time at Sandy Hook, stated with admirable hope and fight that they returned home from Washington “disappointed but not defeated.” But, as is to be expected, others will pessimistically wonder how many more lives have to be taken before action becomes inevitable.