Senate does something about gun safety reform

It's not much so far. Really it's kind of pathetic that a simple cloture vote to allow debate is such big news.

The procedural vote followed a breakthrough by Sens. Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, and Pat Toomey, R-Pennsylvania, who reached a compromise on broadening background checks to include private purchases at gun shows and on the Internet.

Because of the bipartisan deal, Senate Democrats backing the legislation received support from enough Republicans to approve the cloture motion, 68-31, setting up debate on the proposals and amendments expected to last for two weeks.

Only two Democrats defected and 16 Republicans voted for cloture. One of them surprisingly being my own generally useless Richard Burr. While I'm certain he'll vote against any actual reform bill, just voting to allow it to come to the floor brought out the gun loving crackpot hordes in protest. The general drift of the commentary was how dare he give OWEbama a political victory. They will never forgive this grave betrayal of their constitutional rights and they're going to kick his RINO ass out of office. Of course they'll forget all that when he votes against the final bill.

Some milquetoast bill may yet get passed out of the Senate. Then John Boehner's House gets to further eviscerate the reforms. Unlikely to solve the problems. But DC media and the Beltway junkies have something to talk about for the next few weeks. So there's that...