Today, almost four months to the day after a gunman opened fire at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the Senate started voting on a series of amendments to President Obama's gun bill, and the body immediately voted down a bipartisan plan to extended background checks on gun sales. At 54 to 46, most of the Senators approved of the plan, which would have required checks for guns sold online or at gun shows. But that wasn't enough, because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid took a deal requiring every amendment get 60 votes to pass. Why did he do that? The Washington Post explains:

On the heels of Connecticut's post-Newtown push to restrict assault weapons, a Texas tea party congressman has plans to send form letters to Yankee gunmakers, goading them to move their operations to the Lone Star State.

As the Senate prepared this morning to chicken out of tougher background checks on gun buyers, the New York Times plumbed the depths of Armslist, an online "firearms marketplace," and without much trouble turned up felons, fugitives, and random dudes hawking hundreds of guns at a time:

Three months after Gun Appreciation Day resulted in several accidental shootings, another gun-advocating event has been marred by gun violence. On Saturday, it was reported that a man died from gun shot wounds suffered at NASCAR's NRA 500 race at Texas Motor Speedway. Late Sunday afternoon, medical investigators ruled the shooting a "self-inflicted injury," saying the man shot himself in his head.

Is there any way to understand this latest bit of schwag (pictured below) from Texas Congressman Steve Stockman other than to think he'd like to see armed fetuses shooting their way out of the wombs of pregnant women who are considering having abortions? Zygotes threatening their mothers with guns—what a grisly and horrifying thought, not to mention stupid considering that a fetus can't aim for shit. But very funny, apparently, to Steve Stockman, who wants you to know you can have one of these bumper stickers all for yourself if you donate just $10 to his 2014 reelection campaign.

Mother Jones recently posted a roundup of National Rifle Association ads through history, depicting the lobby group's descent into madness, but our eyes caught one particular pit stop on the road to crazy—this pro-gun 1993 TV commercial titled "Laughing Criminal," featuring a speaking role by future SNL star Molly Shannon.

One thing that's essential in the ongoing discussion about how to regulate guns, everyone agrees, is to hear the voices of ordinary, law-abiding gun owners. So here's columnist Kathleen Parker in the Washington Post, explaining why proposed gun restrictions won't prevent gun crime:

A two-year-old armed citizen shot his mother in the stomach with a 9 mm Glock. Not to be confused with this or this.

Another four-year-old armed citizen, this one in New Jersey, shot a six-year-old in the head with a .22 rifle. [Related]

Guns don't kill people—no, they do. One did this past Saturday, in the 26,000-person town of Lebanon, Tennessee, when it was left loaded on a bed, within grabbing distance of a toddler.

The common wisdom when it comes to mass shootings has been to get the hell out of the way and call the cops. But according to new research, it might be better to take an active role when a crazed gunman starts firing.

My new roommate owns a gun and has a concealed weapons permit. I have no idea what kind of gun, but I know it's small enough to fit in the front of his jacket while he works at his job outdoors. He's told me that when he stands outside, at a non-security job, sometimes people try to start fights with him, and he reaches his hand inside his the front pocket of his jacket. He tells them he's not the one to fuck with.

A man in Iowa is currently in hospital recovering from an injury he sustained after a tree he was using for target practice fired back at him.

For seven years now, Dennis Veilleux has held leadership positions at Colt, a Connecticut-based company whose sole reason for existence is to manufacture weapons designed to kill things. In December, using a gun modeled after Colt's trademarked AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, a man named Adam Lanza stormed Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and killed 26 people, 20 of whom were children. Naturally, the massacre of dozens of Connecticut's most innocent citizens has made some residents question their state's relationship with guns. The governor of Connecticut, Dannel Malloy, has gone so far as to say he'd like to see stricter state gun laws enacted, perhaps even a ban on the AR-15-type rifle used by Lanza in his rampage.

Senate Democrats dropped the assault-weapons ban from their gun bill, rendering the ban an easily defeated amendment.

Police in Chicago say a teenager with gang ties tried to blame a self-inflicted gunshot to the groin on a pair of ninjas before eventually coming clean.

Police investigating reports of a man with a gun at a University of Central Florida dorm found a student dead from an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound—and explosives and firearms in his room. All morning classes have been cancelled, and the dorm has been evacuated.

Guns "are for wars, and we have a war in the inner city."

Gregory Rodriguez, the host of the Sportsman Channel show The Rifleman's Journey, was killed Friday night, the victim of a murder-suicide by an apparently jealous husband, according to Montana police. Rodriguez, who is also an editor at Shooting Times Magazine and a contributing editor at Petersen's Hunting, Guns & Ammo, was visiting a woman at the woman's mother's home in Whitefish, Montana when Wayne Bengston, the woman's husband, showed up. It remains unclear what Rodriguez and the woman were doing at the time, but whatever it was, it sent the 41-year-old Bengston into a rage; shortly after entering the home, he shot and killed Rodriguez and severely beat his wife.

How many people do you know who have been shot?