F-word Senate again: Minority defeats majority on gun amendments

We mentioned the other day, that it had appeared there was a "breakthrough" in the Senate that there would be able to be debate and an up or down vote on the gun control bill and its nine amendments. But the reporting on the vote of cloture was not that simple.

The gun amendments needed 60 votes to pass. But why?

But, why does the background check amendment — and the other eight amendments that will be offered — need 60 votes rather than a simple majority? The answer is a combination of Senate procedure and the complex politics of guns.

The vote on the so-called Manchin-Toomey amendment was 54 in favor, 46 against — failing to reach the 60-vote threshold needed to move ahead. Four Republicans supported it, and four Democrats voted no.

A controversial Democratic plan to ban dozens of military-style assault weapons was also defeated by a vote of 40 to 60.

The votes were a setback for President Obama, who angrily blasted Republicans for defeating the background check compromise, saying, “The gun lobby and its allies willfully lied about the bill.”

“All in all, this was a pretty shameful day for Washington,” Obama said, promising that “this effort is not over.”

A number of other amendments also failed to earn the 60 votes necessary to pass: A GOP proposal including a number of changes, 52 to 48; a bipartisan amendment to stiffen penalties for “straw purchasers,” 58 to 42; a GOP-backed amendment that would have permitted “national reciprocity” of state-issued concealed carry permits, 57 to 43; a GOP plan to extend gun rights for veterans, including those deemed unable to manage their financial affairs, 56-44; and a Democratic amendment to limit the size of ammunition magazines, 54-46.

The raw emotion of the background check amendment defeat played out in the Senate gallery just after Vice President Biden read the vote count in his capacity as Senate president.

“Shame on you!” at least two women were heard shouting.

As they were escorted from the Capitol, Patricia Maisch and Lori Haas said they shouted in anger. Maisch successfully knocked a large ammunition magazine out of the hands of Jared Loughner in Jan. 2011 after he shot former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) and other bystanders.

“They are an embarrassment to this country, that they don’t have any compassion or care for people who have been taken brutally from their families,” Maisch said as officers attempted to remove her from the building. “I hate them,” she said of the senators.

“We’re sick and tired of the death in this country and these legislators stand up there and think it’s a bunch of numbers,” said Haas, whose daughter, Emily, was wounded in the April 2007 shooting at Virginia Tech.

“It’s a shame, it’s appalling, it’s disgusting,” she added.

U.S. Capitol police also arrested a protester for carrying a loaded gun on the Capitol grounds hours before the vote. Police identified the man as Alan Hoyle, 52, of North Carolina and recommended that he be charged with carrying a pistol without a license and possession of an unregistered firearm and ammunition, said Officer Shennell S. Antrobus, a spokesman.

The chief architects of the plan to expand the national gun background check system, Sens. Joe Manchin III (D-W. Va.) and Patrick Toomey (R-Pa.), acknowledged in interviews early Wednesday that their proposal lacked sufficient support.

In a fired-up Rose Garden speech, President Obama, who tried to use his Bully Pulpit to lead to the bi-partisan compromise of Sen. Manchin (D) and Toomey (R), shared with the American people his frustration with the fact that the necessity of compromise and majority vote in the U.S. Senate seem to be losing positions.