Nearly a month removed from watching his background checks legislation fall flat on the Senate floor, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) revealed Thursday what still bothers him about that decision.
In an interview with MSNBC's "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell," Manchin said Washington must look itself in the mirror regarding the evidence between gun control and public opinion.
"What bothers me right now, if we are in such a state of influx if you will in this city of ours, of Washington, toward something that makes so much common sense," Manchin said. "And the facts are here to support what we're saying, and 80 percent of people support what we're trying to do, and we can't muster up the votes, something's wrong, and we've got to change."
Manchin leveled on Tuesday that the National Rifle Association has not helped matters, telling CBS that the group was "rattling the cage" by scaring gun owners to believe their 2nd amendment rights were in jeopardy. He reinforced that this is far from the case, telling O'Donnell how puzzled he was.
“I can’t understand why the leadership of organizations such as the NRA would think that we’re invading anybody,” he said. "If anything, this protects the 2nd Amendment. It expands it.”
Manchin added that the December shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. was a call for "gun sense" that changed his own thinking. Even after the mid-April defeat, he said Tuesday in New York that the background checks bill is "coming back," Yahoo! reported.
"I would like to think if you're an American, and you have a family, it had to change you," Manchin told O'Donnell Thursday. "Who would've ever thought that twenty babies, truly babies, 5, 6 years old, would've gone to school and not returned safe?"
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