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A new poll shows 92 percent of people support expanded background checks, but the Senate just rejected two background check bills. AEDKA STUDIO/Shutterstock

Pressured by last week's Democrat-led filibuster for gun control, the U.S. Senate held votes today on rival plans—two bills supported by Republicans, two by Democrats—for expanding background checks and restricting access to guns for people on federal watch lists.

Both plans failed:

Each party offered a proposal it said would keep terrorists from obtaining firearms and a second shoring up the existing system of background checks for gun purchases. With the Senate visitors' galleries unusually crowded for a Monday evening, lawmakers voted 53-47 for the Republican background check plan and 44-56 for the Democratic version — both short of the 60 needed to move ahead.

The two competing measures for keeping firearms from terrorists also faced defeat along mostly party lines, with each side accusing the other of dangerous political grandstanding and inflexibility. Democrats said the GOP proposals were unacceptably weak while Republicans faulted the Democrats' plans as overly restrictive.

The proposals' gloomy fates underscored the pressure on each party to give little ground on the emotional gun issue going into November's presidential and congressional elections. It also highlighted the potency of the National Rifle Association, which was urging its huge and fiercely loyal membership to lobby senators to oppose the Democratic bills.

(Emphasis mine.)

It was pretty obvious these measures were going to fail, despite last week's shooting in Orlando—the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history. Why was it so obvious? Because, as the Washington Post points out, the Senate took almost the exact same votes after the San Bernardino shooting.


Meanwhile, in a new CNN poll, 92 percent of people said they support expanded background checks and 85 percent said they support banning people on federal terror watch-lists from buying guns.

If you need some hope right now, try this.