WASHINGTON -- A divided Senate blocked rival election-year plans to curb guns Monday, eight days after Orlando's mass shooting intensified pressure on lawmakers to act but knotted them in gridlock anyway.
In largely party-line votes, senators rejected one proposal from each side to keep extremists from acquiring guns and a second pair shoring up the government's system of required background checks for many firearms purchases.
Each measure fell short of the 60 votes needed to progress. Democrats called the GOP proposals unacceptably weak while Republicans said the Democratic plans were too restrictive.
Arkansas' two U.S. senators opposed the Democrats' amendments and favored the Republican ones.
In a written statement, U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton said Democrats "seem more interested in political games than protecting our national security. The bills they put forward would have done nothing to prevent the Orlando terrorist attack. And they would do nothing to deter those planning future attacks against the United States."
"The largest and most pressing threat against Americans is not guns, it's terrorists who use guns. Disarming law-abiding citizens and trampling on their Second Amendment rights to defend themselves is the exact wrong response to terrorist attacks and violent criminals," the Dardanelle Republican added.
U.S. Sen. John Boozman released a written statement explaining his vote.
"No one wants a situation where known terrorists have guns. However, we must prevent this while protecting the freedoms of law-abiding citizens who are mistakenly placed on the various watch lists maintained by the federal government," the Rogers Republican said.
"Constitutionally-protected rights of law-abiding Americans cannot be stripped without due process, which is exactly what would happen if the amendments offered by some of my Democrat colleagues today were adopted. We must keep working to find a common ground that balances these two demands," he added.
The stalemate underscored the pressure on each party to stand firm on the issue going into November's presidential and congressional elections. It also highlighted the potency of the National Rifle Association, which urged its membership to lobby senators to oppose the Democratic bills.
"Republicans say, 'Hey look, we tried,'" said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. "And all the time, their cheerleaders, the bosses at the NRA, are cheering them."
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said the Orlando shootings, in which the FBI says the American-born gunman swore allegiance to a Islamic State militant group leader, show the best way to prevent extremists' attacks in the U.S. is to defeat them overseas.
"No one wants terrorists to be able to buy guns," McConnell said. He suggested that Democrats used the day's votes "to push a partisan agenda or craft the next 30-second campaign ad."
After the votes, presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton issued a one-word statement, "Enough," followed by the names and ages of Orlando's victims.
On Fox News Channel's The O'Reilly Factor, presumed GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump said he "absolutely" agrees that people on the government's terror watch list should be barred from owning guns. He did not say if he supported the Republican or Democratic versions of bills rejected Monday.
Monday's votes came after Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., led a near 15-hour filibuster last week demanding a Senate response to the Orlando killings.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., proposed letting the government block many gun sales to known or suspected terrorists. People buying firearms from federally licensed gun dealers can currently be denied for several reasons, chiefly for serious crimes or mental problems, but there is no specific prohibition for those on the terrorist watch list.
The GOP response to Feinstein was an NRA-backed plan by Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. It would let the government deny a sale to a known or suspected terrorist -- but only if prosecutors could convince a judge within three days that the would-be buyer was involved in terrorism.
Murphy's rejected proposal would have expanded the requirement for background checks, even to many private gun transactions, leaving few loopholes.
The defeated plan by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, increased the amount of money that funds the background-check system. It also revamped language prohibiting some people with mental health problems from buying a gun, which Democrats claimed would reduce current protections.
Monday's votes were 53-47 for Grassley's plan, 44-56 for Murphy's, 53-47 for Cornyn's and 47-53 for Feinstein's -- all short of the 60 needed.
Also Monday, the Supreme Court refused to hear a Second Amendment challenge to a Connecticut law banning many semi-automatic rifles. The law, enacted in 2013 after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., made it a crime to sell or possess the firearms, which critics call assault weapons.
The decision not to hear the case, not long after the mass shooting in Orlando, Fla., does not set a Supreme Court precedent. But it is part of a trend in which the justices have given at least tacit approval to broad gun-control laws in states and localities that choose to enact them.
The case, Shew v. Malloy, was brought by four individuals, a business and two advocacy groups. They said the ban was irrational, ineffective and unconstitutional.
In October, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York upheld the ban almost entirely. It acknowledged that the affected weapons were in common use and assumed their possession was protected by the Second Amendment. But the appeals court ruled that the Connecticut law passed constitutional muster.
The Supreme Court on Monday also turned down a challenge to a similar New York law in Kampfer v. Cuomo. It was filed by Douglas Kampfer, a New York resident who had litigated the case without a lawyer. The 2nd Circuit denied his appeal in a brief order in March.
Information for this article was contributed by Alan Fram, Mary Clare Jalonick, Matthew Daly and Richard Lardner of The Associated Press; by Frank E. Lockwood of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette; and by Adam Liptak of The New York Times.
A Section on 06/21/2016