Senator Kelly Ayotte from New Hampshire faced withering criticism from her constituents at a town hall meeting. Ayotte voted against the compromise proposal reached by Senators Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Pat Toomey, R-Pa that called for limited background checks.
Amongst the crowd, Erica Lafferty, the daughter the principal killed at Sandy Hook Elementary leveled stern questions to the Senator,
“You had mentioned that day the burden on owners of gun stores that the expanded background checks would harm. I am just wondering why the burden of my mother being gunned down in the halls of her elementary school isn’t more important than that,”.
Ayotte countered that efforts should address mental health to prevent guns from falling into the hands of the mentally ill. She continued, “…we have fallen down on actually prosecuting gun crimes and violations of our current background check system.”