It is appalling and very discouraging to not see background checks for the purchase of guns not passed. Something as modest as this legislation should have been a no-brainer for our fellow congressmen and women.

To sum it up in short terms, the legislation proposed by Democratic Senator of West Virginia Joe Manchin and Republican Senator of Pennsylvania Pat Toomey would expand background checks to gun shows and all internet sales and make it impossible for criminals and the mentally ill to own firearms.

Plus this legislation is something the American public wants. According to a CNN/ORC International Poll, about 86 percent of Americans say they support expanded background checks for guns.

However, this goes to show you how out touch some of the congressmen and congresswoman are with what the concerns and needs of Americans.

Yet lets not blame those congressmen and women who voted no, the NRA should be chastised because of false claims about what the bill didn’t do.

The claimed the bill will make a national registry for guns and that would make it possible for the government to confiscate firearms from the people.

However, that is not what Senators Joe Manchin and Pat Toomey proposed. But to some extent, the NRA’s false claims seemed to only served one purpose, and that is to bully its senators into making it debate about the federal governments infringement of the peoples rights to bear arms.

At the end of the day, we ask ourselves the questions, did the government actually do anything about the recent mass shootings, and the answer should be no, they didn’t.

It should be the responsibility of our lawmakers to protect their people from the mass violence that occurs from firearms.

This piece of legislation is not restructuring a new system; rather, it is just making background check for guns more expansive so that it can potentially stop future acts of violence.

We can gripe about how some of the senators didn’t listen to us, but we should make our voices heard, because it is obvious that if nearly 90% of Americans support backgrounds than our senators would have a standing of what the American individual wants.