President Obama didn't pull any punches this evening during a Rose Garden address called after Senate Republicans derailed a nominally bipartisan compromise on extending background checks. "There are no coherent arguments as to why we didn’t do this; it came down to politics," Obama said, referencing recent polls suggesting that around 90 percent of Americans backed the effort. "They caved to the pressure. And they started looking for an excuse—any excuse—to vote no."

That pressure, Obama said, came from from the gun lobby and their allies who "willfully lied about this bill" by suggesting it would create a national gun registry. "Unfortunately this pattern of untruths about this legislation served its purpose."

The president was joined by several families of the victims of Newtown, along with Joe Biden and Gabby Giffords, at the press conference, where he vowed that he wasn't done fighting for stricter gun laws. “All in all, this was a pretty shameful day for Washington,” Obama said. "But this effort is not over."