Surrounded by Newtown family members, President Obama gave a speech this afternoon angrily denouncing Senate inability to pass meaningful gun safety legislation, in particular the Manchin-Toomey amendment to strengthen the current system of background checks. "All in all, this was a pretty shameful day for Washington."
He also promised that today's votes were "just round one" of the ongoing fight for gun reform:
"[T]he fact is most of these senators could not offer any good reason why we wouldn’t want to make it harder for criminals and those with severe mental illnesses to buy a gun. There were no coherent arguments as to why we wouldn’t do this. It came down to politics." [...]
"To all the people who supported this legislation -- law enforcement and responsible gun owners, Democrats and Republicans, urban moms, rural hunters, whoever you are -- you need to let your representatives in Congress know that you are disappointed, and that if they don’t act this time, you will remember come election time."
A full transcript of his remarks can be found
here.