He set the right tone for the seriousness of the gun control debate, from having students who had written to him about gun control as a backdrop to neatly bifurcating legislative action that he could take through executive order.
Although the 50-49 vote was on a nonbinding "sense of the Senate, " which seldom take up this much of the Senate's time or attention, this one was passionately fought against the backdrop of the huge Mother's Day march for gun control.