Anyone know where i can find the names of the senators who voted for and against the particular gun bills?

It broke down along party lines with each party voting for its own measure and against the opposition's. To be honest all the proposals were shit and didn't deserve to be passed, so yea for democracy actually working. Passing knee jerk legislation in the wake of a tragedy is how we got the TSA, Guantanamo, and massive NSA data collection.

*controversy

Adding video to channels (Controversy) - requested by MrFisk.

Hasan bests him on this issue.

Very nearly. There was a token cross-over vote here and there, but pretty much straight partisanship. Super.

1 in every 300 Americans is on the terror watch list.

Dems cried about how bad the watch list is, how it's unfair that innocent people are flagged and have practically zero ability to get their name off the list (unless they're some big wig).

...

But now it's not a retarded broken list that unjustly punishes innocent people without due process. Now it's good to go.

-scheherazade

The rep version wasn't too bad.

Basically the status quo, but would get the person flagged onto LE radar along with a 3 day delay.

Doesn't crap too hard on innocent people, while at least drawing attention... in case attention is needed.

All in all a decent compromise, given that the watch list is packed full of innocent people that were robo-flagged.

-scheherazade

I'm not well-informed enough about the contents of each of the 4 bills to concur with your "they were all shit" assessment (though I can certainly believe that might well be true).

But I bigtime agree with being against "knee jerk legislation" ... cough cough Patriot Act cough cough.

On the other hand, a very legitimate gripe about the Legislative branch of government is that it doesn't even pass "knee jerk" legislation because moving one's knees requires being alive with basic brain function. The Senate (and House) might as well be a fuckin' corpse with rigor mortis. Sits around and accomplishes nothing except getting increasingly putrefied as time goes by.

They suck...they realize it was time to step up and failed because they were so out of practice with getting things done.

First off, 1 in every 300 Americans are NOT on watch list used for this. That's complete horse crap. Less than 5,000 people living in the US would have been impacted by the bill had those people actually tried to get a gun. 1/300 Americans is 0.0033% of Americans. The actual percentage of Americans being impacted? 0.0015384615384615385% with the highest estimate, and that highest estimate would also assume every one of those people would seek to buy a gun where a background check would be conducted.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article85294962.html

If you go with the gun ownership rate of roughly 33% (generous), now you're talking 0.000512820512820513% of Americans impacted by the law who would actually go buy a gun, and that's assuming those people ALL went to buy a gun where a background check would be conducted. That's like one out of 2000 people.

Secondly, it was a terrible compromise.

We all need to understand just how ineffectual just the concept of putting anyone on the watchlist would be anyway in stopping a shooting.

We're talking about stopping only the people on the watchlist who are actually trying to buy a gun where they'd do a background check, not a private sale.

And on top of that, if the government can't make a case against them within three days, they get the gun. There's no way the federal government would be able to make a case with all the evidence within three days.

It was ridiculously weak and ineffective as is. The Democrats' bill was a joke, and the GOP's turned into a Carrot Top-esque joke.

The senate and house official websites can be confusing, but you can find full voting records there.

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/vote_menu_114_2.htm

The links under the vote tally column are what you want, and the votes were on the 20th.

Not 100% by party lines, but pretty close.