PRESIDENT OBAMA: The fact is most of the Senators could not offer good reason why we wouldn’t want to make it harder for criminals and those with severe mental illnesses to buy a gun. There were no coherent arguments as to why we wouldn’t do this. It came down to politics, the worry that that vocal minority would come after them in future elections. They worried that the gun lobby would spend a lot of money and paint them as anti-Second Amendment. And obviously a lot of Republicans had that fear but Democrats had that fear, too, and so they caved to the pressure. And they started looking for an excuse, any excuse, to vote no.