What a difference a few months and a few campaign ads make: Ayotte votes to close gun loophole

Looks like election year pressures are getting to New Hampshire Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte. On Monday, Ayotte departed from her usual practice of carrying water for the gun lobby and voted with most Democrats to prevent people on the terrorist watch list from getting guns.

Gabby Giffords’ PAC, Americans for Responsible Solutions, has been hammering Ayotte with ads over her gun votes. Those votes include a no vote on … preventing people on the terrorist watch list from getting guns. Ayotte also voted against expanded background checks in 2013, following the shooting deaths of 20 school children and six staff members and teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School, then released an ad pretending she’d supported expanded background checks.

Ayotte was feeling the heat, in other words, and now she’s been pushed all the way from misleading ads to an actual vote. But the measure still didn’t pass because members of Ayotte’s party blocked it, and the minute she stops being scared of the November election she’s likely to be back to helping vote down even the smallest effort to make it the slightest bit more difficult to get guns. There were 406,496 gun deaths in the U.S. between 2001 and 2013. Her past record and the likelihood gun violence will continue unabated make Ayotte complicit in the next 406,496. 

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