Brad sedd:

All the Republicans voted against something with 91% support among the public. Tell me how this ends for the Republican Party.

Ok, I will byte.

They will have to use gerrymandering and voter suppression?

I think they actually voted against storing the background check data which was part of the bill

The issue is not background checks, which apply to the majority of gun purchases already. The issue is whether the results of the background checks will be saved for those law-abiding citizens who pass the background check.

What useful purpose could that database server? What harm could it do in malevolent hands?

Disagreement on that issue is what prevented Schumer and Coburn from reaching a compromise.

Hmmm, and they wonder why Congressional approval is around 13%.

Saving or discarding the info seems like a mere formality to me; I'm sure the NSA has all of it anyway, without getting any stinkin' warrants. How's about the Republicans address that little unconstitutional travesty sometime in the near future? If they do that, I might start to think they actually mean what they're saying, rather than assuming they're just bought and paid for.

Scrivener @3 writes:

The issue is not background checks, which apply to the majority of gun purchases already.

Ah, how the gun advocates play with statistics.

Since 40% of guns are sold without background checks, it is true that background checks were utilized for the majority of gun purchases.

But, given that there were 16,808,538 applications for the purchase of weapons requiring background checks in 2012, that would mean that more than 12 million guns were sold via the gaping gun show/Internet sales loopholes.

12 million guns falling into the hands of criminals and the sanity challenged would seem to be a significant problem for anyone other than those who fall for the NRA "majority of purchases" line.