The backlash over a tweet by Nate Bell, the Republican Arkansas state representative who jabbed "cowering" "Boston liberals" on gun control in the midst of a citywide manhunt for the second Boston bombing suspect, flared on Friday with a New England lawmaker calling for his resignation.

New Hampshire state Rep. Peter Sullivan (D), who has strong ties to Arkansas, made the suggestion in a letter obtained by the Arkansas Times:

Bell's comments are deeply offensive to those of us who live in the Greater Boston area. We have family members and friends who are being terrorized by Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. The people of Boston have shown remarkable courage. patience, and humanity during a time of tragedy. To see an elected official use the pain and suffering of our neighbors turned into an opportunity for partisan grandstanding is beyond insensitive, it is barbaric.

Rep. Bell should do the right thing and consider resigning his seat.

(Read more on Sullivan from the Arkansas Times.)

Bell's original tweet suggested that Bostonians locked down in their houses on Friday would have felt more comfortable with the type of assault weapons and large-capacity magazines that many had supported banning in gun control legislation that failed this week.

I wonder how many Boston liberals spent the night cowering in their homes wishing they had an AR-15 with a hi-capacity magazine? #2A

— Nate Bell (@NateBell4AR) April 19, 2013

Bell had earlier attempted to back away from the comment, saying he was only expressing "frustration" over gun control efforts supported by many Democrats.

"I don't regret the content as much as I regret the timing," Bell told The Associated Press. "I really didn't think about it going to Boston and was generally expressing my personal view of how I would have felt in that situation myself."

The nationwide attention given to Bell's tweet also forced other state lawmakers from both parties to step in and denounce the Republican's message. One of the sharpest responses came from state House Minority Leader Greg Leding (D), who called Bell's remark "tasteless."

"The people of Boston are not cowards. They are patriots," Leding said in a statement issued by state Democratic Party, according to the AP. "No one, including Rep. Bell, should ever infer that the American people are anything other than courageous, and the only words we should be offering to the people of Boston are those of support and of prayer."

Feelings of disappointment and anger overwhelm those of relief or excitement over the Senate's rejection of background check legislation earlier this week, according to a new HuffPost/YouGov poll. That result comes as no surprise, given that the vast majority of Americans continue to favor expanding background checks for those seeking to purchase a firearm.

Asked to choose the word that best described their feelings about the Senate's rejection Wednesday of an amendment to expand background checks, 32 percent of respondents said they were disappointed and 28 percent said they were angry, compared to 17 percent who described themselves as relieved and 6 percent who said they were excited. Another 18 percent said they weren't sure which word best described their feelings.

The poll found that 71 percent continue to favor requiring background checks at gun shows and for online sales, as the Senate agreement would have done, while 17 percent said they were opposed to such checks. Another recent survey on the Senate proposal, conducted by ABC News and the Washington Post, found that 86 percent of respondents said they supported the expanded background checks.

An earlier HuffPost/YouGov poll conducted in March found that 73 percent of Americans said they support background checks, which was also on the lower side compared to other public polls on the issue.

In the new HuffPost/YouGov poll, 90 percent of Democrats, 64 percent of independents, and 60 percent of Republicans said that they support background checks.

But among Republicans, the words chosen to best describe their feelings about the bill may provide some insight into why most Republican senators felt comfortable opposing the background check requirement. A combined 39 percent of Republicans said that they were either excited or relieved, while 38 percent said they were disappointed or angry. Twenty-three percent of Republicans said they weren't sure how they felt about the defeat of the amendment.

Both Democrats and independents were more likely to choose negative than positive words to describe their feelings, by a margin of 84 percent to 8 percent for Democrats and 53 percent to 26 percent among independents.

Although most Americans say that they support expanded background checks, the new survey indicates that the issue isn't one Americans are following closely. Only 36 percent said that they have heard a lot about the Senate's rejection of the measure, while 48 percent said they had heard a little and 16 percent said they had heard nothing at all.

And those who were following the developments most closely were slightly less likely to say that they supported expanded background checks. Of those who said they had heard a lot, 67 percent said they favored background checks, compared to 26 percent who opposed, while those who had heard only a little favored them 75 percent to 13 percent. In addition, 31 percent of those following most closely used positive words to describe their feelings about the Senate rejecting the measure, compared to only 22 percent of those who had only heard a little.

The poll was conducted April 17-18 among 1,000 adults using a sample selected from YouGov's opt-in online panel to match the demographics and other characteristics of the adult U.S. population. Factors considered include age, race, gender, education, employment, income, marital status, number of children, voter registration, time and location of Internet access, interest in politics, religion and church attendance.

The Huffington Post has teamed up with YouGov to conduct daily opinion polls. You can learn more about this project and take part in YouGov's nationally representative opinion polling.

My first reaction on hearing of the Senate's failure to get 60 votes for even modest measures to regulate the flow of guns into the hands of people who shouldn't have them, such as background checks supported by 90 percent of Americans, was to be furious at the spinelessness of the four Senate Democrats who voted against the measure (Mark Begich, Max Baucus, Mark Pryor, and Heidi Heitkamp), as well as the Republicans. And also with Harry Reid, who wouldn't lead the fight on changing the filibuster rule when he had the chance.

The deeper message here is that rural, older, white America occupies one land; younger, urban, increasingly non-white America lives in another. And the dividing line on social issues (not just guns, but also abortion, equal marriage rights, and immigration reform) runs between the two.

Yes, I know: Plenty of people who are rural, older, and white aren't regressives on guns, abortion, equal marriage, and immigration. And plenty who are urban, younger, and non-white are. My point is that if you want to explain what's happening in America on these non-economic issues you have to understand what's happening to the nation demographically -- and why the demographic split is important.

Begich, Baucus, Pryor, and Heitkamp may be Democrats but they're also from rural, older, white America. That land has disproportionate political power in the Senate, and a gerrymandered House -- which may not bode well for immigration reform over the next few months, and suggests continuing battles over "state's rights" to determine who can marry and when human life begins.

Over time, though, older, rural, white America is losing ground to a nation becoming ever younger, more urban, and increasingly non-white -- a fact that threatens the former so much that it's in full backlash against the forces of change.

ROBERT B. REICH, Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, was Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration. Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written thirteen books, including the best sellers "Aftershock" and "The Work of Nations." His latest is an e-book, "Beyond Outrage," now available in paperback. He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine and chairman of Common Cause.

Doctors, psychologists, ethicists and others, along with our society at large, debate whether "the ends justify the means." But nobody debates whether "the means justify the ends." There is no point even looking for an answer to a question that is patently silly. For now, just hold that thought, please.

Medical ethics can be very challenging. There are the difficulties of interpreting "do everything" in desperate situations where heroic effort is on one side of a line, and futility on the other. There are the challenges of doing "no harm," while taking great risks. There are challenges of optimal resource allocations for the greater good. There are challenges related to tradeoffs between beneficial and adverse effects, particularly with high-risk surgical and critical care procedures. In this context, the question of ends justifying means comes up routinely.

Perhaps the most vivid and obvious illustration is any variation on the theme of euthanasia. Those who believe it is the work of medical practice to protect life view all such variants as wrong, if not anathema. If, however, the work of medicine is to preserve dignity, and autonomy -- the case for assisted dying can be made, at least under narrowly-defined circumstances. It can be a case where the ends -- relief from suffering, death with dignity -- might justify the means.

The question has far-ranging implications for the whole field of ethics. One school of thought, for example, is that whatever achieves the greatest good for the greatest number is "right." This is referred to as utilitarianism, and while few real-world ethicists espouse it in pure form, they do invoke its principles.

The extreme contrary view, deontology, stipulates that some things are wrong just because they are wrong -- no matter what effects they exert. Again, the pure practice of this probably doesn't exist, but it informs the "do ends justify the means" debate.

Psychology experiments famously reframe the "ends versus means" debate by presenting a scenario where a great deal of good can be done, such as saving a whole group of people, but only by doing intentional harm -- such as killing an individual.

There are good reasons why the debate endures, and is to some extent insoluble. There may be no single right answer.

But again, no one wrestles with the reciprocal question -- "do the means justify the ends?" -- and with good reason. If you are getting bad outcomes, what point could there possibly be in "justifying" the means that lead to the ends you don't want?

In a world where means are used to justify ends, there might be means to treat the nausea of pregnancy. For those affected by it, those would be welcome means, indeed. And for those with more severe forms of pregnancy-related nausea and vomiting, they might even be truly important means.

But, as has in fact proven true in the past, those means might produce serious unintended consequences, in the form of birth defects. In a world that sensibly asks "do ends justify means?" while just as sensibly avoiding "do means justify ends?" the response to this is rather obvious. Doing what seems like a good idea stops being a good idea when it produces bad outcomes. A treatment for pregnancy-related nausea that produces common, serious birth defects would not be justifiable. The abandonment of thalidomide for this purpose demonstrates that this is not just hypothetical. In the real world, bad ends unjustify well-intended means.

And now we come to the reason for this ramble. My hope, if not quite my belief, is that we might constructively look at the vexing issue of gun control through this same lens. We do so, of course, in the immediate aftermath of background checks failing to make it through the Senate.

The roiling debate about the Second Amendment seems to hinge on where one places one's semantic emphasis. Those opposed to any regulation of gun sales emphasize "shall not be infringed." Proponents of gun control emphasize the subordination of that clause to "a well regulated Militia."

I have opinions about this, and you may as well, but since we are unlikely to resolve any differences of opinion about the language of the amendment here and now, let's not try.

Rather, let's consider this: The language of the amendment, however it is interpreted, is about means. Some manner of access to guns for some portion of the citizenry is the means, and something like defense against tyranny and protection of liberty the presumably intended ends.

Clearly, the ends could justify the means. If more guns of all kinds freely accessible to all meant more liberty, more security, less risk of tyranny -- then the means might well be justified, and the fuss would end.

But the means cannot justify bad ends. If the consequences of interpreting the Founders' means one way are ill and unintended, such as the massacre of schoolchildren without better protection of liberty of defense against tyrrany, then the means -- whatever their original intentions -- are subject to reconsideration, no less than thalidomide. It in no way tramples the rights of pregnant women to have their nausea treated when we abandon a drug that causes birth defects. Bad ends, however unintended, unjustify means, however well-intended.

We might better confront the gun control debate with data, gathered in a non-partisan manner, about the ends we are getting. We could make a systematic effort to look for all potential good, and all potential bad, ensuing from the status quo just propagated on the floors of the U.S. Senate. If we don't even look for such data, it implies someone doesn't want to know the ends we are getting, and that is an always ominous sign of ulterior motives and cowardice. We must know the effects of our actions to be qualified judges of our conduct.

Whether ends justify means will remain, in particular contexts, a legitimate and challenging debate for the foreseeable future. But in a world where means justify ends, and unintended consequences don't matter -- the very concept of ethics has met a very mean end already.

-fin

Dr. David L. Katz; www.davidkatzmd.com
www.turnthetidefoundation.org

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By Roberta Rampton

WASHINGTON, April 19 (Reuters) - President Barack Obama, moving swiftly after the U.S. Senate rejected a measure to expand background checks for gun buyers, acted on Friday to patch holes in the existing database dealers use to ensure they are not selling weapons to criminals or the mentally ill.

The Health and Human Services Department will issue a formal proposal on Friday to make sure one of its privacy laws does not prevent states from reporting information to the background check system.

"While this background check system is the most efficient and effective way to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous individuals, it is only as effective as the information that is available to it," an administration official said.

Obama was visibly frustrated after the Senate on Wednesday defeated a bill that would have expanded background checks for guns bought at gun shows and on the Internet.

"Even without Congress, my administration will keep doing everything it can to protect more of our communities," Obama said on Wednesday.

"We're going to address the barriers that prevent states from participating in the existing background check system," he said. The idea was part of a series of executive actions Obama first announced in January.

Health and Human Services will ask for public comment on how the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act's privacy rule prevents some state agencies from reporting data to the background check system, and how best to remove those barriers.

The rule allows hospitals and agencies to disclose data when it is required by law, but some states did not have explicit laws requiring state agencies to share data from mental health records, said a report last year by the Government Accountability Office, a federal government watchdog.

The GAO found that 17 states had provided very few records to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.

The privacy rule was one issue, but technology problems and limited staff resources were also identified as barriers. (Editing by Philip Barbara)

However tragic the effects of a pressure cooker filled with explosive powder and shrapnel, there is a worse way to use one: cook elected officials to death. That's the effect of the gun-lobby pressure cooker where they turn up the heat until members of Congress wilt into spineless mush.

I learned about kitchen pressure cookers in the '50s. My father, ever adoring of clever innovations and ever despairing about my mother's lack of culinary skills, brought home this newfangled pot with a steam vent on the locking top. Mom, raised in an intellectual New England family whose cook never permitted the children entry to the kitchen, thought cooking meant heating something up. Period. Unfortunately, the new pressure cooker advanced nothing but the speed and thoroughness with which any foods placed in it could be reduced to undifferentiated slime.

You see why I make the analogy with D.C. We have witnessed this wilting process writ large on the national scene with the failure of the Senate to pass any measure that would in any meaningful way reduce the carnage caused by the 100,000,000+ guns Americans possess.

And all because of the pressure cooker into which the gun-industry lobbyists have tossed a fistful of our representatives, weak-minded enough to believe they are defending the Second Amendment or craven enough to pretend that no measure is worth enacting unless it can provide perfect protection from gun violence for all people at all times.

Both excuses for inaction are bogus in the extreme. Certainly the history of gun-control legislation and Supreme Court interpretations of the Second Amendment is extraordinarily complicated, replete with legalistic zigs and zags and even far-fetched justifications rooted in ancient laws of foreign countries, of all things. Fine, play those silly games and acknowledge that England's 1689 Bill of Rights had influence way back then in our own Constitution's provisions. But I thought we fought the Revolutionary War so we could think for ourselves.

The bald truth is that nothing but political cowardice prevents our employing common sense today in enacting updated provisions for conditions beyond the imagining of the Framers. They seem largely to have wanted to ensure that if the Brits had second thoughts about letting the colonies go, the Minutemen would be sufficiently armed to repel them once again. Those dutiful owners of muzzle-loaders were automatically enrolled in the militia, at the ready. My guess is that today's enthusiastic owners of assault rifles probably have scant enthusiasm for shipping out to Afghanistan to try their luck on the battlefield where people actually shoot back at them.

Look, everybody knows that the only people who can define a cogent need for the continuing sale of large-magazine, high-output assault rifles are the managers of the gun-manufacturing companies who fear being fired if they don't meet their revenue targets. Granted, their desire to keep their jobs reflects a valid personal need. But it conflicts with the public's need to keep these fearsome weapons out of the hands of anyone but the military and law-enforcement officers. Smart executives morph their companies away from dying markets all the time, and it's now time for the gun manufacturers to learn how to do that, too.

The other prevailing excuse of legislators -- that any given proposed measure won't solve the whole problem -- is a classic example of dishonoring the longtime maxim that "The perfect should not be the enemy of the good." Because there is a glimmer of truth to their assertion, it elicits from all too many a sad nod of understanding and sympathy instead of the outraged demand that they get cracking on enacting all the rest of the measures that will fill the gaps left by whatever they are currently running away from enacting.

Again, let common sense prevail. Nobody expects that perfect safety from gun violence will result from legislation, no matter how many measures and how comprehensive they may be. But nobody believes, either, that an all-out campaign to enact key provisions won't reduce deaths by irresponsible access to guns. Eliminate them totally? Of course not. Reduce them? Unquestionably. And so failure to take these measures means that blood is on the hands of those who might have acted but failed to do so. And so, too, is that blood on the hands of those who make it their business to discourage legislators from doing the right thing.

"Shame on you!" rang from the gallery in the Senate as the background-check measure failed, prompting the eviction of the two women who shouted it. Unfortunately, the Sergeant-at-Arms evicted the wrong parties from the Senate chambers. All 46 of them remained on the floor.

This week in April is a bad one. Even before the tragic events at the Boston Marathon Monday or before the explosion in West, Texas, this week in April was full of tragedy. With a presidential assassination, school shootings, bombings and failed raids, American had been put through the ringer.

Which is part of the reason why I think the failure to pass the gun control measure hit me and many other Americans particularly hard. This measure, which failed by six votes, didn't take away people's guns. It didn't make it harder for law abiding citizens to acquire weapons. All it was going to do was expand background checks. That's it. It should have been a no brainer, especially when recent polling shows upwards of 90 percent of Americans support stricter background checks.

This vote happened a day after the six year anniversary of the Virginia Tech shooting, in which 32 people were killed and 17 more were injured, making it the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history. The shooter (and I purposely do not use his name) did go through the background checks required of him, but lied on them. He did not disclose he had been court ordered to seek mental healthcare. Someone who had the obvious mental illnesses he had should under no circumstances have been allowed to purchase the weapons and ammunition he did.

Stricter and more expanded background checks (in addition to beefing up our mental healthcare system) would have been a step in the right direction to prevent tragedies like what happened at Virginia Tech again.

This vote also took place three days before the 14th anniversary of the mass shooting at Columbine High School, where 12 students and teachers were killed and 21 more injured. The shooters of that massacre were able to acquire their weaponry with relative ease. This shooting had such an effect on people that even the NRA, at the time, supported instant background checks as a way to save lives.

Oh how times have changed.

The thing that I think disgusts me the most is many of these Senators met with victims of gun violence and their families, including survivors of what happened in Sandy Hook. They looked these people in the eye as they shared stories and pictures of their loved ones who had lost their lives due to gun violence, and yet, could not vote for something the vast majority of Americans (and NRA members) want. It is disgusting, and shows the perverse power the lobbying industry has on our elected representatives. They've shown time and time again that they are not representatives of the people, but representatives of lobbyists and special interest groups.

They underestimate us regular citizens.

They underestimate how angry we are when we see our children dying in their classrooms. They underestimate how heartbroken we are to hear tales from cities of 6-month-olds dying from stray bullets. They underestimate how fed up we are with this system, and they underestimate how much we want gun control.

They also underestimate our ability to remember. We won't forget this. All of the members of the Senate who voted no on this will be up for reelection at some point. I don't care what they do from now until that day comes. I will remember who voted against common sense and I'll let my ballot do the talking for me.

For now what happened is unfortunately just another sad event scarring the week of April 15th. Because while no one lost their lives immediately, our Senators have shown they don't want to do whatever they can to prevent future tragedies, and if we've learned anything this week, it's that there are sick, twisted, individuals who will do whatever they can to harm us. That won't change because of a piece of paper, and unfortunately will never change. However, doing whatever we can to make it harder for people to commit acts of violence should be a priority.

Gun control laws will pass. It's what the people want and it's only a matter of time until the outrage becomes so great that it has to happen. If this Congress won't take the steps to do it, then we'll keep voting until we get one who will.

Stephen Colbert went after opponents of gun control on last night's "Colbert Report" after the Senate failed to pass background checks supported by a majority of Americans.

"We no longer have to live in fear that some maniac will come after those we love with a gun control bill," he joked, offering faux praise for the senators as his tongue-in-cheek conservative commentator character.

He singled out senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) Mark Begich (D-AK) for voting against the measure, as well as "Senate majority leader" Wayne LaPierre, the NRA spokesman who has become a public face for anti-gun control measures.

Check out the clip above to see Colbert react to the vote.

It is exasperating to watch gun control reform stall in Congress. While measures such as an assault weapons ban and universal background checks represent good sense, I don't put too much stock in their power to reduce gun violence meaningfully in crime-ridden neighborhoods and troubled homes. Even if these measures muster the votes to pass, our work would be far from finished.

As sensible as they are, I'm concerned these measures offer simplistic answers to complex problems and don't attack those problems at the root. They fail to address, for example, the street violence that tears at cities like Trenton, N.J., where young people are gunned down year after year not by madmen wielding automatic weapons but by other young people carrying handguns.

What's needed are policies that address the underlying social, cultural, and mental health factors that drive gun violence, with the understanding that these issues vary from one region of the country to another. As the factors differ across locales, so should the solutions. In Trenton, the cycle of violence begins with poverty at birth and accelerates over a lifetime of interrupted schooling, inadequate social engagement, and missed career opportunities. Our youth need targeted interventions before they drop out of school and drastically limit their options and life expectancies.

Over the past several years, college leaders across the country have successfully parried proposals to permit concealed guns on their campuses with forceful, data-driven arguments showing campuses are safer without them. This is wise policy that protects students. New Jersey has strict gun-control policies, including mandatory background checks and a ban on concealed weapons on campus. As the national conversation over gun control takes many twists and turns in the coming months, I hope we in academia will advocate with the same reason and passion for the lives outside our walls.

State institutions like The College of New Jersey (TCNJ), with a public service mission and strong ties to the community, can and should play a role in developing regional strategies by working closely with local stakeholders to identify problems, analyze data, and recommend credible, data-backed policies. TCNJ has taken important steps in this direction, but I'm confident there is more we can do.

Since 2011, TCNJ's Bonner Center for Civic and Community Engagement has served on the Trenton Prevention Policy Board, a group of educators, community advocates, and government officials charged by the state Attorney General with identifying policies and programs that will help keep the region's young people out of the criminal justice system while promoting their positive development. The board's working groups focus on juvenile crime and domestic violence prevention, but also on health, education and employment.

Many of the proposals to come out of these and other local policy groups focus on keeping kids in school and helping them build life skills. They include reducing the drop-out rate between middle school and high school with enhanced transition programs, developing a "job coach" program for young men and women entering the workforce, and matching the younger brothers and sisters of juvenile offenders with social service providers who are able to assess and respond to their needs.

With the College's encouragement, the Bonner Center has reached out to engage the wider campus population in these efforts. TCNJ faculty members participate by researching proposed prevention policies to ensure their effectiveness is supported by data. Students outside of the Bonner program take part in social service projects through our Community Engaged Learning program. When Bonner teams identified students in Trenton middle and high schools at risk of failing the statewide assessment tests, for example, the teams were able to flood the schools with tutors to help focus and prepare the young students. Given TCNJ's public mandate and our responsibility to expose our students to the issues they will encounter as adults, I feel this is a good use of the time and talents of the students, faculty, and staff.

Undoubtedly, the policies governing background checks and concealed weapons on our campus make it easier to focus our energies on gun violence in the urban communities nearby; however, we do not naively assume that we are immune from it. We take emergency planning seriously.

A critical incident planning group meets throughout the year and runs tabletop exercises for scenarios ranging from an active shooter, to a power outage, to an infectious disease outbreak. TCNJ has sent more than a dozen staff members to national emergency management and training programs. With the help of the New Jersey State Police, TCNJ has staged live active-shooter drills on campus and invited local law-enforcement agencies to participate.

It is unquestionably our responsibility to advocate for wise policies on our campus and prepare, as best we can, to prevent and respond to violent crime at our college. That, however, is not sufficient. We can and must do more for the communities and people beyond our campus boundaries.

A bipartisan cadre in the Senate has now rejected a very reasonable expansion of background checks for gun purchases, largely in the name of "law abiding gun owners." Their mistake is identifying the person and the gun as a single unit. Unfortunately for public safety, they aren't.

What this argument skips over is the bare fact that tragedy too often flows from the separation of a gun from its original, legal buyer. While people can be law abiding by their nature, objects cannot. A gun is no more "law abiding" than any other highly portable and potentially dangerous object such as a car, a prescription drug, or a jet. Each of these is objects is benign, until it isn't because it is being driven by a drunk, abused by an addict, or flown into a building. Whether a gun is law-abiding or not depends on who is holding it, and our system of gun regulation does far too little to track or control them to make sure that they are in "law-abiding" hands.

The irony behind all this is that we do have comprehensive tracking of cars, prescription drugs, and jets -- in each case, government agencies maintain databases to properly regulate them, with one purpose being to keep them from passing into the wrong hands. Somehow, though, when it comes to the inherently more dangerous object that is a firearm, there is a tremendous political reluctance to impose similar regulations.

When a car is transferred from one owner to another, the state must be notified as title is exchanged. Prescription drugs cannot be legally transferred to another person once they are assigned to a registered user at a pharmacy. What is wrong with either of these models when it comes to guns?

Gun rights enthusiasts will (properly) point out one respect in which guns are different: Unlike cars, drugs, or jets, the right to possess a gun is constitutionally protected. The Supreme Court's 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, which found a personal right to bear arms under the Second Amendment, represented a remarkable change -- for the first time, the Court found that the Constitution expressly allows the possession of specific type of object. This does give firearms a special status. However, the bare fact that gun possession is a remarkably specific and personal right does not bar a program of registration (as with cars) or non-transferability (as with drugs) connected to all gun sales. The majority opinion in Heller itself established that nothing in that opinion "should be taken to cast doubt on... laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of guns." Requiring universal background checks or even establishing a registry of who has bought a gun is well within that limit.

It is constitutionally permissible for states to ban the sale and possession of marijuana, self-serve gas, cars that pollute, or radar detectors. Heller enshrined in law the anomaly that guns alone are immune from such treatment, but that does not absolve governments from the responsibility to protect citizens from gun violence. Registration and tracking of guns will further the cause of making sure that guns are sold to and stay with the "law-abiding" citizens gun proponents talk about.

When a young man in California kills himself with a gun, or a child in Chicago is shot, or a gang member in Miami grabs a pistol and sets out in search of revenge, the constitutional right to possess a gun for self-protection is subverted. The gun is now being used for destruction. Requiring background checks and empowering law enforcement to match up people with guns serves to protect the right to possess a gun for self-protection, not endanger it. In the end it is people, not guns, which are law-abiding, and reasonable regulation of guns imperils none of our rights as citizens.

Yesterday the United States Senate failed to pass the Manchin-Toomey amendment to the Safe Communities, Safe Schools Act, a first-stab attempt at addressing our national gun violence pandemic. It called for extending criminal background checks to all commercial gun purchases, namely those at gun shows and on the Internet, that are not currently subject to such checks. The proposal, co-sponsored by Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.), both staunch supporters of gun rights with "A" ratings from the NRA, no less, would not have banned assault weapons, limited high-capacity magazines or even required background checks to be conducted when guns are transferred in private sales, such as between friends and family members. In fact, it would have facilitated easier interstate gun sales, shielded gun vendors from lawsuits if a weapon they sold was used in a crime, allowed sportsmen to bring guns across state lines, permitted members of the military to buy guns in their home states and actually subjected government officials who tried to create a gun registry to 15 years in jail. Hardly draconian gun control.

The background checks proposed in Manchin-Toomey, supported by over 90 percent of the American people, could not possibly have been more modest and uncontroversial. So why couldn't this proposal even pass the Democrat-controlled Senate? Contrary to what you were taught in high school civics class, we're living under minority rule.

There are a few culprits, which I'll address in turn:

1) The Filibuster

The Manchin-Toomey plan failed despite the fact that there were 55 senators in favor and 45 opposed. Why? Senate rules require that at least 60 senators must vote for "cloture" to end debate before most substantive votes can take place. A group of 40 or more senators who oppose a bill or nomination for which there is majority support can filibuster, or simply vote against ending debate. In the interest of time, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid secured unanimous consent to instead require 60 votes to adopt each of the nine proposed amendments to the gun bill, rather than holding lengthy procedural votes to end debate on each individual amendment. Reid could have asked senators to agree to set the bar at 51 votes (a simple majority), in which case the background checks amendment would have passed easily. However, then there was the possibility of amendments passing that would have run contrary to the goal of reducing gun violence in our society, effectively destroying the entire Safe Communities, Safe Schools Act.

The Democrats could change the Senate rules to reduce the number of senators needed to vote for cloture or end the filibuster altogether. However, given that Democrats have been the minority in the Senate in the past and will not have a majority forever, there has been reluctance to abandon or weaken this rule that protects the minority party in the chamber. However, the flip side of this is that, as we saw yesterday, a minority of senators can halt just about anything, leading to gridlock and dysfunction.

2) The Structure of the Senate

Given that four Republicans supported the Manchin-Toomey proposal, it would have passed if every Democrat had voted "yea." However, three Democrats up for reelection next year -- Max Baucus of Montana, Mark Begich of Alaska, and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota -- as well as Mark Pryor of Arkansas, opposed the bill. The founding fathers purposely designed the Senate to give each state equal representation, as opposed to the House, where each state's representation is determined by its population. However, in this case, the four Democratic senators who voted against Manchin-Toomey represent sparsely populated states with a combined population of 5,385,349. So the amendment was effectively at the mercy of four senators representing the equivalent of 27.5 percent of the population of the state of New York or 1.72 percent of the U.S. population.

3) Money in Politics

Last year the American gun industry made an estimated $11.7 billion in sales, with profits of $993 million. While statistics on the number of gun sales not subject to background checks are imperfect, thanks to the 1996 law preventing the federal government from conducting research on violence, officials estimate that a whopping 40 percent of gun sales occur without checks. Expanding background checks would make gun sales less seamless and prevent the sale of guns to criminals, which the gun industry evidently fears would hurt its bottom line. For this reason the gun industry enlisted groups like the NRA, which the Violence Policy Center's Josh Sugarmann calls "a virtual subsidiary of the gun industry," to stop the background checks proposal and anything else that may affect its bottom line. Unsurprisingly, the NRA's proposal to reduce violence calls for more armed guards in public places and more laypeople (like teachers) to carry guns -- in other words, things that would sell more guns and further enrich the gun industry.

How does the NRA work its course? In the last election cycle the NRA spent over $25 million on ads, lobbying and campaign contributions. The organization grades and endorses candidates and mobilizes voters for candidates it supports, and against candidates it opposes. Of course, the NRA determines who and what it considers to be pro-gun and anti-gun, and its definition can be very different from what a reasonable person might conclude. In a letter to senators, NRA Executive Director Chris Cox announced the he "unequivocally opposed" Manchin and Toomey's "misguided" plan to expand background checks, stating that it "would unfairly infringe upon the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding gun owners." Cox threatened senators, warning them that a vote for Manchin-Toomey, which he termed an "anti-gun amendmen[t]," "would be considered in NRA's future candidate evaluations." Republican candidates and Democrats in conservative-leaning states fear bad grades from the NRA and the wrath of the organization that comes with not keeping in lockstep. Thus we can understand why four Democrats and all but four Republicans voted against this straightforward, common-sense plan to make sure that guns aren't sold to felons.

So what can we do?

It is a sad day when the U.S. Senate, "the world's greatest deliberative body," cannot even make a minor dent in our gun problem that kills 10 times the number of people who died on 9/11 every single year. How is it that we can spend trillions of dollars to help other countries build democracies and combat crime when our own Senate cannot pass a proposal that the majority of its members and over 90 percent of the American people support, all because it has hijacked by procedural dysfunction and what essentially amounts to bribery and blackmail by the gun lobby?

The future of the filibuster is in Sen. Harry Reid's hands, but all of us can shape who gets the privilege of representing us in Congress. As Gabby Giffords wrote in The New York Times, "if we cannot make our communities safer with the Congress we have now, we will use every means available to make sure we have a different Congress." The 2014 midterm elections are fast approaching, and those of us who care about public safety can make our voices heard and open up our wallets to support candidates who back sensible gun laws. Fortunately, we have people on our side like New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is happy to put his money where is mouth is to help counteract the NRA. Already this year, Mayor Bloomberg spent $2.2 million to help Robin Kelly, a supporter of gun control legislation, win Jesse Jackson Jr.'s former seat in Illinois, and he committed another $12 million for a national ad campaign. Mayors Against Illegal Guns also announced that it will be issuing its own grades of elected officials, who should be aware, as Mayor Bloomberg put it, that "the NRA is not the only one scoring them."

It is unfortunate that the Supreme Court struck down limits on political spending by corporations and organizations in Citizens United. However, as long as this remains the law of the land, there is no reason that the majority of Americans who support common-sense gun laws cannot outraise and outspend the gun industry and make our senators and congresspeople quake in their boots before casting a vote that leaves all of us vulnerable.

The tyranny of the minority is not inevitable; we can and we must reclaim our democracy. As we see with guns, it is a matter of life or death.

After Sandy Hook I called my son Danny and we both said, "Enough is enough." And those three words say a lot about the need for common sense gun laws but there are three words that I feel are even more important... We The People. It always serves to remind ourselves that the government works for us -- they should be doing what we tell them to do -- not the other way around. What happened in the Senate with the vote for stricter gun laws ignored the voice of the American people. It also defied common sense. Over 200 years ago Thomas Paine, an American patriot, ignited the American Revolution when he wrote his pamphlet called "Common Sense." Somehow along the way we have lost our common sense. When it is harder to obtain a library card than it is to buy a gun in this country, something is terribly wrong. I mean, would you let your neighbor drive 100 miles an hour in their car through your children's school zone? I hope you wouldn't, but regardless everyone has the right to own a care but the safety or our community comes first and foremost. It's just common sense. We must always balance our rights and responsibilities as responsible citizens. This is the same common sense gun legislation that was proposed to the Senate. It is clear that this is a public safety issue and it's about keeping guns out of the wrong hands. And when I say the wrong hands, I include our children. It's simply common sense.

If elected government officials have decided to put lobby money and political interests ahead of the people's interest, then we have the responsibility to tell them, to quote Dr. Martin Luther King, "We are no longer content with business as usual." We need to raise our voices, act now and let those senators who voted no know that they are accountable for their actions. We will not sit still until sensible gun laws are in place. It's just common sense. I served as a foot soldier in World War II, I stared into the eyes of the beast, and it made me a pacifist. More than 3,000 people have died from gun violence since those beautiful 20 children and their educators died so tragically in Newtown. They deserve action for their deaths -- we all deserve action. We owe that to everyone who has died because gun laws have not protected the innocent and have made it too easy for the wrong people to have access to guns. This is about saving lives.

This is no longer a fight for the politicians; it's a battle for the American people who have the power to make change through democratic means. Although my favorite technology is still a pencil, I say we use the new technology of texting to let Congress know that we have just begun to fight. If you text MYVOICE to 877877, you will be prompted by my voice or other concerned friends of mine who have joined me, and you will be connected automatically to a member of Congress who voted no to common sense gun laws. Tell them what you think about and that enough is enough. It's your right as an American citizen to be heard. It's just common sense.

"I'll tell you this: No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn." -Jim Morrison

There's been a lot in the news this week about violence and the various ways Americans are trying to address its complex manifestations. On the gun violence front, the U.S. Senate voted Wednesday on seven different amendments to reform gun laws in an attempt to produce a bill that would advance beyond the filibuster. For the highlights:

Two amendments were offered and supported almost exclusively by subsets of the Democratic caucus (and Mark Kirk of Illinois). Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) proposed banning magazines that can hold more than 10 bullets. Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) proposed banning a list of certain specially identified semiautomatic guns and accessories that comprise what she styles "assault weapons."

Three amendments were offered by Republicans. Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) aimed to add language that would require "judicial authority" to bar veterans and their families from bearing arms. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) intended to allow for a certain degree of reciprocity in concealed carry allowance. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) offered perhaps the most ambitious conservative measure. His proposal was designed to improve the availability of records to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, address the intersection of mental health and crime, and criminalize straw purchases and gun trafficking.

Only two amendments failed completely. The Democratic bans -- on so-called "assault weapons" and "high-capacity" magazines -- were each opposed by an outright majority of Senators. Of all the votes, Feinstein's gun ban fared the worst, garnering merely 40 votes in favor (39 Democrats plus Mark Kirk) to 60 votes opposed (44 Republicans and 16 Democrats).

The other five amendments -- Democratic and Republican -- each won between 52 and 58 votes. Nevertheless, all failed due to the filibuster threshold of 60 votes.

All of the Republican proposals received outright majority support but were ultimately blocked by Democratic filibusters. For a party with a 10-seat deficit in the upper chamber, that level of relatively bipartisan appeal is a noteworthy feat. The two primarily Democratic measures that attracted majority support were Sen. Patrick Leahy's (I-Vt.) attempt to make gun trafficking a federal crime (which was backed by the N.R.A.), and the joint venture by Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) to expand background checks.

For whatever reason, the vote on the Manchin-Toomey amendment is gaining the most attention among the same chattering classes that still haven't figured out why semiautomatic weapons aren't assault rifles. But President Obama's indignation notwithstanding, the background check endeavor was not the only potential law foiled by minority intransigence.

Contrary to what you might hear from much of the media about gun reform and obstructionism, the Democratic Party is at least as much to blame for recent legislative failures as the GOP. Every one of the Republican proposals not only earned more than 50 votes but also presumably stood a decent chance at a fair hearing in the House of Representatives. By contrast, only half of the Democratic bills (if we count the "bipartisan" Manchin-Toomey bill among them) could be so regarded.

Thus, of the five bills that would have passed the Senate in lieu of the filibuster, three were killed by (mostly) Democrats and only two by (mostly) Republicans. Worst still, even the New York Times notes that more liberal Democrats blocked sensible GOP proposals essentially out of spite, despite previous exhortations not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good:

Mr. Begich said the Senate could have united behind measures with broad support, like strengthening the existing background check system with more data about would-be gun buyers who have been deemed mentally ill, rather than expanding the checks to sales not now covered. Mr. Begich also cited bolstering school safety, criminalizing gun trafficking and improving mental health programs.

"That's a lot," he said. "Is it perfect? No. But it's a lot."

Those modest steps, however, were sacrificed because other Democrats did not want to see further-reaching provisions fail at the expense of a package that the gun rights lobby wanted, aides said."

That this travesty of process is a resounding failure on all sides is a burden we all bear with appropriate shame. But the way forward is not through escalating antagonism -- if further escalation is even possible at this point.

It is a truism that we will not all agree on the best way forward to address violent crime -- or any other issue -- in America. (We can't even all agree that the world isn't run by lizard people!) Yet at some point, we will need to sustain a certain level of good faith and mutual respect in order to accomplish some semblance of meaningful reform. Pretending that the other side has offered nothing -- and I have yet to hear liberal pundits give fair accounting of the popular Republican amendments stymied by Democratic filibuster -- simply because you disagree is neither productive nor fair. And it affords no moral righteousness that compels beyond the choir.

But after everything else, standing up in the Rose Garden or on your MSNBC soapbox and disparaging the personal integrity or humanity of the opponents whose earnest input your allies just rejected is, frankly, rude. There is plenty of disgust to go around, but now is the time to be constructive. There is much work yet to be done.

A Republican state legislator in Arizona joked about audience members shooting into the air during a hearing on the United Nations sustainability agenda last week.

Rep. Bob Thorpe (R-Coconino National Forest) last Thursday used an ad hoc committee hearing on the sustainability plan known as Agenda 21 to express his objections to the plan and to crack a few jokes, including advice for other Agenda 21 opponents in the audience. Thorpe's joke and highlights of the hearing were posted to YouTube Tuesday evening.

Thorpe's comments came as audience members, who were largely supportive of a ban on implementation of Agenda 21 in the state, were cheering comments made against the sustainability plan.

"Please refrain from laughing and clapping," Thorpe said. "Here in Arizona, if you have your Colt .45, feel free to shoot them in the air."

Thorpe's assistant said the representative declined to answer questions from The Huffington Post regarding his remark.

State Sen. Steve Farley (D-Tucson), the only Democrat on the ad hoc committee, told HuffPost that he has problems with Thorpe's joke in light of several gun-related incidents, especially the January 2011 shooting of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D) and others in Tucson.

"The gun thing was so spectacularly out of order, particularly with what has happened in this country and in Arizona," Farley said. "Any joking about shooting guns in a public hearing is wrong."

The video also includes Thorpe joking about his credentials as an environmentalist. In the video, Thorpe says, "I am a tree hugger: I hug them right before I cut them down."

The ad hoc hearing was called by state Sen. Judy Burges (R-Sun City West), who has been leading the legislative charge in the state to ban Agenda 21.

Agenda 21, which was signed by the U.N. in 1992 has not been ratified by the U.S. Senate and is not law in the United States. Conservatives, chiefly the John Birch Society, have been attempting to prevent state and local governments from implementing the plan, claiming that it would lead to the seizure of private property and would force people to live in walkable communities.

Farley said Burges called the hearing to advance her bill, which is pending approval in the House, and that he asked to participate as she had no Democrats on the panel.

"She invited all the tea party folks to come in to talk about their view," Farley told HuffPost.

Burges said during the hearing that Arizonans fear Agenda 21 as a means for the federal government to control them. Witnesses at the hearing, among them Navajo County Supervisor Sylvia Allen (R), a former state Senate president pro tem, described the U.N. plan as a way to harm citizens and families by forcing Americans to walk and bike and to give up their cars.

Agenda 21 "is really the Communist manifesto for the 21st Century and it is what we have replaced our Constitution with," Allen told the ad hoc panel.

Farley told HuffPost that he believes Agenda 21 is a distraction.

"The saddest thing to me is that we have not gotten to the important things, like the Medicaid expansion, funding our schools and growing the economy," Farley said. "When that is not dealt with, you end up with this."