Reid: 'Everybody in America from Every State' Wanted the Gun-Control Amendment

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) charged senators who shot down gun-control amendments with ignoring “everybody in America from every state.”

“The forces that worked to defeat this amendment became so obsessed with the defeating any commonsense reforms whatsoever, they lost sight of the big picture. The big picture sometimes is little pictures. People like Jessica when to watch a movie and was gunned down in Aurora, Colorado. Families I met today from Newtown, beautiful little children were murdered. This is just the beginning,” Reid told reporters.

The senator said “time and time again on issue after issue,” Republicans put their “short-term political goals and interests” above the interests of “mainstream America.”

“The American people are awake, alert, paying attention, they’re not going to stand for this forever, what just took place,” Reid continued.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said the names of GOP Sens. Pat Toomey (Pa.), Susan Collins (Maine), John McCain (Ariz.) and Mark Kirk (Ill.) “need to placed on record as four who stood up for sensible gun safety laws in America.”

“Those of us who know our form of government know it is not the end. There is more that we can do and will do reaching out to convince those members who voted the other way today and perhaps in the next election to challenge them, to bring the issue forward to the American people that this is worth a fight,” Durbin said.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said “brute political force won out over what is right and America will be a less safe place because of it.”

“Things change quickly here in Washington. They’ve changed for gay marriage. They’re changing for immigration and they will change for gun safety sooner than you think,” he predicted.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) called the votes “probably the saddest day of my years in public life.”

“The hardest part was to try to look these families in the eye and explain to them how 90 percent of the American people can be on their side and the United States Senator failed to reach 60 votes,” he said. “I haven’t the words yet.”