U.S. Senate rejects expanding background checks on gun purchases

U.S. Senate on Wednesday afternoon rejected the proposal to expand background checks on gun purchases, dealing a major blow to gun control efforts led by President Barack Obama and Democrats.

By a vote of 54 to 46, the proposal of expanding background checks on gun purchases was short of the 60 votes needed to advance in the Senate.

Obama responded quickly to such a failure on Capitol Hill by making a televised statement at the White House to Americans, joined by some family members of victims killed in Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut last December.

Calling it "a shameful day," Obama stressed that the measure of expanding background checks was supported by 90 percent of Americans but a minority of Senators decided that "it was not worth it" to protect children.

"Are they serious?" said the president in disbelief, adding that those lawmakers refused to listen to the voices of American people.

But he vowed that gun control effort was not over yet.

The proposal, a key measure of Senate's gun control package which echoes the president's sweeping gun control agenda, would have expanded checks to cover all firearms sales at gun shows and over the Internet but would have exempted sales between friends and acquaintances outside of commercial venues.

Before the Senate vote, White House spokesman Jay Carney said at the daily briefing that passing such a gun control legislation was always going to be difficult to get 60 votes in Senate.

The universal background checks for all gun sales, a measure that over 90 percent of Americans now support according to the Quinnipiac University poll, seemed to be in trouble during Senators' gun-control negotiation over the past months.

The Senate package of measures include providing more school safety aid, expanding federal background checks on gun sales and strengthening prosecution of illegal gun traffickers.

The Senate vote came nearly four months after 20 school children and six educators were killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, which shocked the nation and renewed the gun control debate.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has already dropped the renewal of the federal assault weapons ban in the whole package, which signaled the measure and even the overall gun control package still lacked enough support in Congress.

Both immigration reform and gun control are Obama's second-term legislative priorities. Over the past weeks, Obama has been trying to build momentum for gun control legislation at the national level through a series of public events. He brought back families of the victims in Newtown tragedy to the capital on Air Force One, the presidential plane to join the gun control lobby on Capitol Hill.