Obama: "A Shameful Day in Washington"

In a rare display of political emotion, President Obama spoke to reporters in the Rose Garden of the White House yesterday, lambasting a cowardly Congress and a lying gun lobby after the Senate failed to pass a bipartisan gun-control bill drawn up in the wake of the Newton massacre.  The President went on to call upon the 90% of the American people who do favor the bill to let their representatives know how they feel.



Full text here.

Alex Koppelman in the New Yorker:

It was always going to be hard to get a gun-control measure through Congress, even one as popular as background checks. So it wasn’t just the vote to block Toomey-Manchin that was so disheartening—that a minority of the Senate, representing a minority of Americans, was able to vote down legislation that had been so watered-down as to make it utterly unobjectionable. It wasn’t just that the Republican-controlled House would never have passed the bill, even if there had been sixty votes for background checks in the Senate. It was watching the whole process, realizing again so vividly and on an issue that matters so much, that the people who make the laws for three hundred million people are often cowards or fools or both.

The unfortunate truth is that so many candy-ass Democrats and liberals are very good at being whiny little bitches about things that concern their own wonderful little selves, but shy to speak up and slow to do anything about issues that affect others.

If you do give a damn about gun contol, however, write or call your senators and representative at USA.gov.