THE NEWS SAYS

People will die because too many senators of both parties voted not just against banning the most lethal firearms and ammunition magazines, but also against imposing near-universal background checks on gun buyers. ... This was the work of a grossly undemocratic house in the thrall of the gun lobby.

The massacre of 20 children by a madman with an assault rifle was of no moment as the Senate voted down the most reasonable of gun controls in a cowardly, unconscionable choice of ideology over life. People will die because too many senators of both parties voted not just against banning the most lethal firearms and ammunition magazines, but also against imposing near-universal background checks on gun buyers.

Criminals and the mentally ill will continue to freely purchase weapons over the Internet and at gun shows — and some will kill with them, as some already have.

Deranged individuals will have greater access to a market saturated by ever more assault rifles — and some will slaughter with them, as some already have in Newtown, Aurora, Tucson and other mass killing fields.

Going into Wednesday’s session, there was no hope for stemming further traffic in assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. The dispiritingly limited question was whether the Senate would honor the country’s overwhelming support for the checks.

As the roll call was taken, it mattered not that nine out of 10 Americans have consistently told pollsters they want guns kept out of the hands of people like Dmitry Smirnov, a domestic abuser who bought a .40-caliber pistol on the Internet and used it to kill a woman he had dated.

Nor did it matter that loved ones of the Sandy Hook dead looked on, distraught, from the gallery as uncaring, unthinking senators cast votes with a disdainful downward point of thumb or finger.

Represented by Mark Barden, who lost his 7year-old son, Daniel, in the Newtown slaughter, the families responded with grace and steadfastness. Standing with President Obama, Barden said of their experience in the nation’s capital:

“We came with a sense of hope, optimistic that a real conversation could begin that would ultimately save the lives of so many Americans . . . . We return home for now, disappointed but not defeated. We return home with a determination that change will happen, maybe not today, but soon.”

The final count was 54 to 46. Although that was a solid majority of support, it fell short in a body requiring a supermajority of 60 votes for passage.

Match the senators who cast negative votes against the proportion of the U.S. population they represent, and you arrive at the devastating finding that the supposed will of only 37% of Americans prevailed.

This was not democracy in action by any remote stretch of the imagination.

This was the work of a grossly undemocratic house in the thrall of the gun lobby.

This was, as Obama said, “a pretty shameful day for Washington.”

And the shame was all the deeper because the background check legislation was the work of a courageous compromise by a Democrat, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, and a Republican, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, both of whom have A ratings from the National Rifle Association.

In decency and responsibility, Manchin and Toomey proposed a law that would merely have mandated the same scrutiny for Internet and gun show buyers as has long been given to people who purchase guns through licensed dealers.

Since those background checks started in 1999, the system has blocked a whopping 1.7 million sales to would-be buyers who had no b business owning weapons.

With precise aim, Mayor Bloomberg cut to the bottom line by saying the minority of senators who ruled the day had “handed criminals a huge victory, by preserving their ability t to buy guns illegally at gun shows and online and keeping the illegal trafficking market well-fed.”

With equal precision and cont trolled outrage, Obama zeroed in on the disgraceful dynamics behind the Senate vote. It was because he had said “enough” to gun violence after the massacre that the check measure got as far as it did.

Working with the Sandy Hook families, as noble a group as there could be, Obama forced gun control onto the agenda and kept it there only to see the Senate minority — 90% of Republicans and a handful of Democrats — do the legislation in.

He was right that the gun lobby had “willfully lied about the bill,” falsely claiming it would have created “some sort of ‘Big Brother’ ” gun registry.

He was right that no senator can “offer any good reason why we wouldn’t want to make it harder for criminals and those with severe mental illness to buy a gun.”

He was right that Republicans and Democrats “worried that the gun lobby would spend a lot of money and paint them as anti-Second Amendment.”

And he and Barden were oh, so right that this fight is not lost. Said Barden:

“We are here and we will always be here because we have no other choice. . . . We are not going away, and every day, as more people are killed in this country because of gun violence, our determination grows. Now is still the time.”

Now more than ever — to save lives and to reclaim government of the people, by the people and for the people from zealots bathed in blood.