Obama, victims’ families overcome by gun owners

By Nedra Pickler

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

Four months ago, President Barack Obama promised a grieving nation he would do everything in his power to change gun laws after 26 students and staff were shot to death at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Turns out his power and the impassioned pleas of devastated families were no match for the force of gun-rights advocates in Congress and across the nation.

The National Rifle Association and its energized supporters overcame national outrage over the deaths of innocent first-graders. The Senate rejected expanded background checks for gun buyers in the face of strong public support for the change, pleas from a former congresswoman still healing from bullet wounds and a campaign bankrolled by a billionaire mayor. Foes of new controls were stronger than Obama’s moral indignation from the president’s “bully pulpit” and his political machine that won two elections but couldn’t translate its grass-roots power to win the gun vote.

Obama, angry and defiant over the defeat, is vowing to fight on. And the NRA says it is taking him seriously. “We are prepared for a very long war and a very expensive war,” association spokesman Andrew Arulanandam said Thursday.

The NRA’s success is built on the passion of gun advocates, activists on both sides of the debate agree. That’s how they were able to defeat expanded background checks despite polling that shows up to 90 percent of Americans support the idea.

“You know what I hear from the members of Congress?” said Vice President Joe Biden. “I just met with one. He says, ‘Well, that may be true, Joe, but that 10 percent who doesn’t agree, they are going to show up. They’re going to show up and vote. And that 90 percent thinks it’s a good idea, but they’re not going to vote for me or against me because of how I vote on this,’” Biden said during a Google Plus online chat Wednesday.

Arulanandam said he refers to NRA members as “super volunteers” who work on political campaigns and get to know lawmakers personally so their voices are even more powerful in the debate. A Washington Post-ABC News poll taken last week shows they are more likely to speak up: 20 percent of gun owners and 14 percent of people who live with a gun owner said they contacted a public official on gun control, compared with 10 percent of adults with no gun in their home.

The changes at the heart of the gun-control bill failed to get the 60 votes needed in the Senate on Wednesday. On the background-checks issue, four Democrats voted against it. They all come from states Obama lost last year. Three of the four face tough re-election fights next year.

The background-check proposal was co-authored by Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who won re-election after running an ad in which he fired a rifle and boasted of his NRA endorsement. At a breakfast sponsored by The Wall Street Journal, he predicted the legislation backed by Obama would have passed easily if the NRA hadn’t threatened to use senators’ votes to determine whom it would support in next year’s midterm elections.

Manchin also said background checks would have been approved if the Senate had moved more quickly, when the nation’s heartache over the Newtown, Conn., school shootings was still in focus. A recent Associated Press-GfK poll found that 49 percent of Americans back stricter gun laws, but that’s down from 58 percent in January.