The Issue: The Senate’s defeat of a gun background-check bill and President Obama’s angry reaction.
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I had to laugh at President Obama’s whining about losing the gun-control vote (“Perils of a Petulant Presidency,” Editorial, April 19).
He mentioned that the majority of the American public supported the bill in his scathing rhetoric against the legislators who didn’t vote for it.
He said that there’s something wrong when politicians do not follow the will of the people.
What’s good for the goose isn’t good for the gander in Obama’s world.
He didn’t seem to care about the will of the people when he forced ObamaCare down the throats of Americans, despite overwhelming disapproval.
His concerns about the American people only seem to matter when it suits his own agenda.
Guy McCallen
Queens
Shame on the Senate for failing to pass a bipartisan proposal to expand background checks to gun shows and Internet sales.
This is an insult to the people killed by gun violence every day and the large percentage of Americans who believe that felons, domestic abusers and those taking dangerous psychiatric drugs should not be able to buy guns without a background check.
It is unfathomable that a senator could sit across the table from a Newtown parent who lost a child and then days later vote against this amendment.
Americans for sensible gun reform will not give up in this fight, and we should not lose sight of the progress we have made.
That we have come this far only strengthens our resolve to make ourselves heard and make Congress listen.
Curtis Taylor
Eugene, Ore.
Mayor Bloomberg, Sen. Schumer and Gov. Cuomo should take careful notice of Obama’s defeat in the Senate gunfight.
Contrary to Obama’s admonition that the vote “was a pretty shameful day for Washington,” it was an affirmation of every citizen’s rights under the Second Amendment.
What is shameful is the effort of the liberal left to use the tragic victims of Sandy Hook as a means to disarm law-abiding citizens.
Robert Mangi
Westbury
In the debate over expanded background checks, I would like to know: Who is against them?
Not lawful gun owners, who wanted it to keep guns out of the hands of people who would do harm.
The only group I see against it is the NRA, but it doesn’t represent the views of its own members on this, most of whom support comprehensive background checks.
I suspect the Senate did it to benefit gun manufacturers by making sure those companies can sell as many guns as possible, regardless of whom they sell them to.
Steven M. Clayton
Ocean, NJ
Even if increased restrictions for background checks were in place before the Newtown massacre, they would have had no effect on what happened that day.
The weapons used were all legally registered and the appropriate background checks for those same weapons were satisfied.
Obama, in his angry partisan scolding of Senate members who disagreed with him, was misguided.
The president should focus on a more urgent cause for reducing gun violence.
That would be changing the nation’s approach to mental-health issues.
It is the paramount way to prevent such tragedies like the one that occurred in Newton from ever taking place.
Billy Mussari
Vandling, Pa.
It is hard to believe that the Senate, and particularly the Republicans, voted for the benefit of the gun and ammunitions industry instead of the American children.
A large majority of the American people are in favor of background checks.
Even a majority of NRA members are in favor of background checks.Lloyd Creech
Penticton, Canada