Dysfunctional Washington D.C. Fails America In Gun Background Check Vote

   New Hampshire Senator Kelly Ayotte showed her true colors in the worst possible way on April 17 by joining with Senate leader Mitch McConnell, the rest of the GOP and four Democrats in their disgraceful rejection of the Manchin-Toomey compromise bill requiring background checks on new firearm owners. This was the common-sense statute that most rational Americans were behind by an amazing 80-89% in national polls leading up to the vote, with an approximate 89% positive right here in New Hampshire. And it was the one segment of the larger original firearms legislation that had included the renewal of Bill Clinton's assault weapons ban that stood the best chance of getting through the conservative-fueled Washington gridlock. As president Barack Obama angrily said after the vote, "The American people are trying to figure out how can something have 90% support and yet not happen", and also called it "a shameful day for Washington".

   Ayotte clouds the issue, and indeed calls into question whether or not she even processes the information readily available regarding what her own state overwhelmingly favors, by claiming that the opponents of her vote whom she won't allow to "bully" her are Obama, Senate head Harry Reid and New York mayor Michael Bloomberg. This is a laughable misrepresentation : her opponents, along with the three people she names, also include the aforementioned 89% of Granite Staters, three fourths of the combined membership of the National Rifle Association, as well as millions of Americans who are sick and tired of less oversight of ridiculously-available deadly weapons than we have for buying a pack of cigarettes. And they also include relatives of the 20 children and six adults murdered last December in the Newtown massacre, many of whom spent the two weeks prior to this latest Republican embarrassment visiting the nation's capital pleading with Senate members as well as gun rights groups in their attempt to pass this no-brainer legislation. The lack of any trace of human empathy from those NRA-backing senators, even after all the face-to-face meetings with grieving kinfolk begging them to reconsider, should send a chill into the hearts of anyone who had a hand in appointing them into office.

   Ayotte, in her misleading op-ed piece last week in the local papers, claims that her former careers as New Hampshire attorney general as well as prosecutor shows that she is tough on criminals. But her past employment and her present one are mutually exclusive as far as the gun issue is concerned. Because now as a senator she is subject to all the pressure, PAC donations and the all-important favorability rating from the NRA hierarchy that she didn't have to worry about before. And keeping CEO Wayne LaPierre happy is obviously far more important to her than the wishes of the state that put her into office.

   And all anyone interested has to do re: Ayotte's trumpeting her recent vote for the NRA-backed NICS legislation (National Instant Criminal Background Check System) would be to check out what this bill would entail. Its implementation would ELIMINATE millions of names of mentally-ill people who are currently prohibited from purchasing firearms, opening the doors for them to re-enter the gun force. Her piece gives the dishonest impression that she had made a courageous vote when in reality she was simply toeing the NRA line. And why would they sponsor this bill if it was going to hurt their sales anyway?   

   Kelly Ayotte is deservedly getting hammered on radio and television by conservatives, liberals and everyone in between on this one. And most of us are aware of the extreme negativity (to put it lightly) that she's been subjected to in the town hall meetings she's been roasted at since the vote. If she can read polls she should've known what to expect.  And the sad fact is we're stuck with this anti-constituent senator for 3 1/2 more years, unfortunately making her currently-plummeting approval ratings a moot point. And New Hampshire voters have only themselves to blame : both the Republicans in November 2010 who didn't examine the dangers of voting for the masses of Tea Party candidates like Ayotte who were swept into office that year, as well as the Democrats and Independents who stayed home twiddling their thumbs because America under Obama's first half-term wasn't back to the high-flying Bill Clinton years yet. Thankfully we did the right thing last November at the state level by voting most of that gang out of office after two horrible years of Bill O'Brien/House-led regression, job loss and education cuts.

   But America's people, who are unquestionably desirous of stricter statutes to keep as many deadly weapons out of as many wrong hands as we can, will have to wait until 2015 for another shot at this. And even that is contingent on more states doing what New Hampshire did a few months ago in their own next election cycles. Because as long as there are significant Tea Party numbers in the D.C. Senate, the filibuster will continue to reign supreme on any vote with less than a 60% majority (indeed, the gun background checks bill PASSED on a 54-46 vote). The GOP in Washington has served notice loud and clear that they plan to continue the anti-humana obstruction that they employed during Obama's first four years, and obviously don't care about all the demographics that they alienate and harm with their tactics.