Meet the gun violence victims who watched the Senate reject gun control

The last time Patricia Maisch was in the Senate gallery for a vote on gun control bills, she was removed by Capitol Police.

“I promised to behave yesterday and not shout ‘shame on you,’” the gun violence victim says. “But it was almost as disgusting.”

Maisch, who survived the 2011 shooting in Tuscon, Arizona that wounded former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Az., was kicked out of the U.S. Capitol in 2013 for yelling at senators from the gallery. She was publicly infuriated that a vote on gun control, spurred by the the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that left 20 children dead in Newtown, Connecticut the year before, had failed to pass.

During the Tucson shooting that killed six people in addition to wounding Giffords and 12 others, Maisch, 67, helped wrestle the gunman’s ammunition from him to prevent him from firing additional shots. She has since become involved with the survivor’s network at Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun control lobbying group funded by former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg and his billions.

She traveled to Washington, D.C. again to watch the Senate vote Monday on gun control legislation following last week’s shooting in Orlando that left 49 people dead in a gay nightclub. Maisch refers to lawmakers as “gutless wonders” who continuously fail to act after national gun tragedies.

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said it was “unconscionable” for Congress not to make changes to the nation’s gun laws he said too easily allowed people who shouldn’t have access to a firearm to buy one.

“Having come through the experience of Newtown, I’ve had enough,” Murphy said of Congress’ inaction following the massacre that shook his home state. Last week, he filibustered on the Senate floor for almost 15 hours to force Republicans to allow gun measures to come to a vote.

Erica Lafferty Smegielski hoped those votes would make it more difficult for “dangerous people,” like terrorists, to legally obtain firearms.

But as she watched senators from the gallery along with Maisch, she saw the outcome was going to be no different following Orlando, the worst mass shooting in U.S. history, than it was after the Sandy Hook shooting that killed her mother.

“Congress has failed us over and over again,” Smegielski, 30, said of the repeated votes that have led nowhere for gun control advocates. “Their inaction is absolutely despicable. They are spineless.”

Her mother was the principal of Sandy Hook, one of six adults murdered when a shooter entered the elementary school with two rifles.

Smegielski, a self-proclaimed single-issue voter, now works for Everytown for Gun Safety. She was on Capitol Hill Monday to lobby senators to vote in support of the bills proposed by Murphy and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.

Smegielski said she visited offices of senators she knew backed the Democratic bills to thank them for their support. She also visited offices of those of whose support she wasn’t so sure.

“It’s really hard to walk into somewhere have a conversation with someone and explain to them the absolute horror that I’ve been through and the unimaginable grief, and for them to just stare back and just say ‘No. No, I’m not going to do the right thing,’” Smegielski said. “It breaks my heart every time.”

Votes against Murphy’s bill, which would have expanded federal background checks required for gun purchases, and Feinstein’s, which would have blocked gun sales to people on government terror watch lists, largely fell along party lines.

Feinstein’s bill also failed in December when she introduced it after the San Bernardino shooting that killed 14 people.

National support for gun control laws is high following the Orlando shooting, with a recent poll showing 92 percent of people support expanded background checks and 87 percent believe felons or people with mental health issues should be banned from buying a gun. Eighty-five percent believe people on terror watch lists should also be banned.

Two Republican-backed bills also failed on Monday, one from Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, that would have required states to provide more mental health records to a national database and flagged potential gun purchases by people on terror watch lists in the last five years. Another from Sen. John Cornyn, R-Tex., would have delayed firearms sales to people on terror watch lists and let a judge permanently bar a gun purchase by a person law enforcement had probable cause to believe was involved in terrorist activity.

Maisch says that while she’s upset — and not terribly surprised by — Monday’s votes, the defeat will actually help gun control advocates in the fall’s elections.

“Why would anybody think it’s ok for a terrorist to have an AR-15 or even a Glock? It’s just incredible,” Maisch says. “We’re on the right side of this moral and social issue and I have hope that in November people will see the light and vote for people who are concerned about their safety instead of guns and money.”

This story was originally published June 21, 2016 at 3:23 PM with the headline "Meet the gun violence victims who watched the Senate reject gun control."