Obama slams US Senate for voting down gun measures

By Michael Hernandez

WASHINGTON (AA) – President Barack Obama assailed the Senate on Tuesday for failing to approve four gun control measures a week after what many have called the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.

“Gun violence requires more than moments of silence. It requires action,” Obama wrote on Twitter via his personal @POTUS account, signaling that he, not a staffer, authored the tweet. “In failing that test, the Senate failed the American people.”

Forty-nine people were massacred and 53 others wounded when Omar Mateen allegedly opened fire in Orlando’s popular Pulse gay nightclub earlier this month.

One measure sought to prohibit individuals who had been on terror watch lists from purchasing a firearm while another would have required a 72-hour delay to allow authorities to prove in court that such an individual posed a terrorist threat.

A third measure would have closed the “gun show loophole” by requiring all individuals seeking to purchase a firearm, whether at a storefront, a gun show or on the Internet, to undergo a background check.

A final doomed measure would have required states to add more information on mental health to a national database.

Two proposals were sponsored by Republicans, and two by Democrats.

None of the amendments were expected to pass, particularly due to this year's elections and disputes over how best to curb the U.S.'s mass shooting epidemic.

Speaking to reporters at the White House, spokesman Josh Earnest clarified that Obama wasn’t referring to the entire Senate, but to the majority-holding Republicans.

“The reason that that bill didn't succeed is because about 95 percent of Republicans flunked the test, and that's the reason that the bill didn't pass,” Earnest said.