Gun Control Fails in the Senate + "The Buried Quilt"

There is a full postmortem in today's paper on the Senate's failure to pass gun control legislation in the wake of the Newtown massacre last December. I began with the unsigned editorial on the Opinion page, "The Senate Fails Americans":

For 45 senators, the carnage at Sandy Hook Elementary School is a forgotten tragedy. The toll of 270 Americans who are shot every day is not a problem requiring action. The easy access to guns on the Internet, and the inevitability of the next massacre, is not worth preventing.

Those senators, 41 Republicans and four Democrats, killed a bill on Wednesday to expand background checks for gun buyers. It was the last, best hope for meaningful legislation to reduce gun violence after a deranged man used semiautomatic weapons to kill 20 children and six adults at the school in Newtown, Conn., 18 weeks ago. A ban on assault weapons was voted down by 60 senators; 54 voted against a limit on bullet magazines. 

Patricia Maisch, who survived a mass shooting in Tucson in 2011, spoke for many in the country when she shouted from the Senate gallery: “Shame on you.”

Jonathan Weisman and Jennifer Steinhauer each have informative pieces today as well. And Obama's media address yesterday is illuminating in its focus on the anti-democratic nature of the U.S. Senate:

Senate rules are not set in stone. A straight up or down vote could have been held without a 60-vote requirement; this would have allowed expanded background checks to pass.

Stasis is not a balance of power. Stasis, in the sense that Thucydides wrote about it in History of the Peloponnesian War, is an artificial block in the body politic that is the result of feuding aristocrats. Stasis leads to things like civil war and tyranny. I was listening to The Celestial Septet (2010) by Nels Cline with the Nels Cline Singers and the Rova Saxophone Quartet as I read the news today. The final track, "The Buried Quilt," felt appropriate: