The U.S. Senate voted almost entirely along party lines Monday to make sure four gun control amendments fell short of passage. But most of those elected officials fell short of what most people want, local officials said Tuesday.
The votes showed national leaders were more concerned with their electoral successes than with public safety, several said.
"My God, don't these people read newspapers?" asked Lake County Sheriff John Buncich, listing headline-grabbing gun violence nationwide. "If you're a gun-toting, law-abiding citizen, you have nothing to worry about, but we're talking about putting restrictions on people who have no regard for human life, whether they're domestic gangbangers or foreigners looking to harm people."
The four amendments — two by Democrats and two by Republicans — would have expanded background checks for new firearm purchases from gun shows and online and made it a crime to not report lost or stolen firearms; temporarily blocked known or suspected terrorists from buying firearms without federal government intervention; allowed the U.S. attorney general's office to block a gun sale to anyone suspected of engaging in terrorist activity; and shored up the background check system for potential firearms buyers, and regulated the ability of people with mental health issues to buy guns
The two Democrat plans were the Murphy and Feinstein amendments, while the two GOP proposals were the Grassley and Cornyn measures. Had they passed, the amendments would have been attached to a funding bill for a number of federal agencies.
The Senate vote came in the wake of the Orland, Florida, nightclub massacre, in which 49 people were killed and 53 were injured by a lone gunman, Omar Mateen. The killings renewed calls for tighter restrictions on guns. Mateen had been the focus of two terror investigations that were dropped.
With some exceptions, each party's members, including Indiana's Republican Sen. Dan Coats, voted along party lines. Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly, however, bucked that trend, voting for all four gun control measures.
"We should all be able to agree to keep guns out of the hands of terrorists and criminals, and I hope the Senate comes together to find a bipartisan solution that would make our country safer, while protecting the rights of law-abiding citizens," Donnelly said in a statement.
Coats, meanwhile, said in a prepared statement that there was bipartisan support to prevent known terrorists from legally buying guns. He said he spoke with Republicans and Democrats in deciding which approach would accomplish that and preserve Second Amendment rights for law-abiding citizens.
"After thinking it through and speaking with all parties involved, it is clear to me that the Cornyn amendment is the best way to keep guns out of the hands of terrorists and protect the constitutional due process rights guaranteed to all American citizens," he said in the statement. "The Feinstein amendment gives the federal government too much power to deny a gun sale without sufficient due process protections for innocent Americans."
Indiana State Sen. Karen Tallian, D-Portage, said she had not read the amendments as of Tuesday afternoon, but, in a tough election year, many politicians are more focused on self-preservation than community preservation.
"I don't get it," Tallian said. "I think there are a lot of legislators who are afraid of doing anything to control guns."
Tallian noted the influence of mammoth lobbying groups, including the National Rifle Association, in blocking anything related to gun control. The lobbyists almost instantly claim amendments like the ones offered Monday night are about abridging American's Second Amendment rights to own and carry firearms, she said.
"I think it's unfair the NRA takes every bit of legislation and turns them into a Second Amendment fight," she said. "Yet, I know a lot of gun owners, individual NRA members, who agree with what I just said, so what (NRA leaders) do as an organization is not necessarily reflective of what their members believe."
Porter County Sheriff Dave Reynolds said he agrees "1,000 percent" with Donnelly's votes, and said the votes on the amendments "should have been about common sense."
"I have always been a strong advocate and proponent of the Second Amendment, but this has nothing to do with the Second Amendment," Reynolds said of the votes. "I don't think these people voted down what they believed to be right. If so, how can you oppose someone on the terrorist watch list not getting a gun?
"What (Congress) should do is vote their conscience and not worry about voting to get themselves re-elected," he said.
Lax gun control laws pose deep challenges for law enforcement, Buncich and Reynolds said. Regular people buying guns for sport or personal protection are one thing, but making it easier for anyone who would do harm to others to buy guns makes their communities less safe they said.
"All we're trying to do, from my perspective, is keep our counties safe, and allowing anyone to just go in and get an assault weapon doesn't make sense," Reynolds said. "People always want to bring the Constitution up, but this is 2016, and times have changed.
"The issues are changing. We now have mass murderers going around killing 49 people. One guy. That didn't happen in 1776."
The AP contributed to this story.