Some on Capitol Hill questioned whether the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other U.S. security agencies failed to share information about suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011, even after reforms enacted to prevent information-hoarding following the September 11 hijacked plane attacks 12 years ago.

Police say the ethnic Chechen brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev planted and detonated two pressure-cooker bombs near the finish line of the marathon on April 15, killing three people and injuring 264.

Tamerlan, 26, was killed in a shootout with police and Dzhokhar, 19, was wounded, captured and charged with two crimes that could result in the death penalty if he were convicted. Dzhokhar remains in fair condition in hospital on Wednesday, U.S. officials said.

Attention has turned to whether U.S. security officials paid enough heed to Tamerlan Tsarnaev having been flagged as a possible Islamic militants by Russia. The FBI interviewed him in 2011 but did not find enough cause to continue investigating.

His name was listed on the U.S. government’s highly classified central database of people it views as potential threats, sources close to the bombing investigation said. The list is vast, including about 500,000 people, preventing law enforcement from closely monitoring everyone on it.

Members of Congress were particularly concerned that U.S. Customs generated an alert when Tamerlan Tsarnaev left for Russia in 2012 but no one was aware when he returned and he was not re-interviewed.

“That’s something that we have to look at,” said Senator Dan Coats, a Republican from Indiana who is also on the Intelligence Committee. “That’s one of the key things that we have learned and need to work on to make sure it doesn’t happen again, and that is simultaneous communication to all the relevant agencies when a warning is posted.”

Members of Congress briefed by law enforcement and media reports citing unidentified sources indicate Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has told investigators from his hospital bed that the brothers grew radical from anti-U.S. material on the internet and acted without assistance from any foreign or domestic militant groups.

“That basically seems to be the story, but I don’t see how we can accept that,” Representative Peter King, a New York Republican on House Homeland Security Committee, told CNN.

“It may end up being the truth but … I don’t see why he would be giving up any accomplices he may have or talking about any connections his brother may have had in Chechnya or Russia,” King said on Wednesday.

Intelligence officials were scheduled to brief members of the House Intelligence committee about the Boston investigation behind closed doors later on Wednesday, and the full Senate was scheduled to receive its own briefing on Thursday.

Investigators have focused on a trip to Dagestan last year by the older Tsarnaev and whether he became involved with or was influenced by Chechen separatists or Islamic militants there.

In Grozny, the capital of Russia’s volatile Chechnya region, a member of the extended family Tsarnaev said the brothers were victims of a Russian plot to portray them as Chechen terrorists operating on U.S. soil.

Among the remaining mysteries was how the bombers acquired the black powder used as explosives in the home-made pressure cooker bombs packed with nails and ball bearings. Tamerlan bought two large packages of fireworks in February from a store in Seabrook, New Hampshire, but the explosive powder they contained would not have been “anywhere near enough” to build the bombs, said William Weimer, vice president at Phantom Fireworks.

TRIBUTE TO FALLEN POLICE OFFICER

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and law enforcement agents from around the United States attended a memorial in Cambridge, Massachusetts on Wednesday for a university police officer who authorities say was shot dead by the Tsarnaev brothers on Thursday night.

The service at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology honoured Sean Collier, 26, with Biden praising a crowd of hundreds of uniformed and plainclothes police officers for their dedication.

“I’m standing for you. You should not be standing for me,” Biden told the crowd as he took the podium. Addressing the slain officer’s family, he said, “there is not much that I’m going to be able to do to fill that void, that sense of loss and grief, or answer those nagging questions of why.”

Collier was killed about five hours after the FBI released pictures of the two suspects, asking for the public’s help in tracking them down.

Police said the two then carjacked a vehicle and later engaged in a gun battle with police in which Tamerlan was killed and Dzhokhar escaped. He was caught in the Boston suburb of Watertown on Friday night, hiding and bleeding in a boat, after a manhunt involving helicopters and armed vehicles that shut down the greater Boston area.

(Additional reporting by Mark Hosenball; Writing by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Grant McCool)

The service at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology honours Sean Collier, 26, who police say was killed by brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on campus on Thursday night. Tamerlan, 26, was killed in a separate shootout with police. Dzhokhar, 19, was captured and criminally charged from a hospital bed where he is recovering from gunshot wounds.

U.S. officials say the ethnic Chechen brothers planted and detonated two pressure-cooker bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon on April 15, killing three people and injuring 264. Ten people lost limbs in the bombing.

Attention has turned to whether U.S. security officials paid enough heed to Tamerlan Tsarnaev having been flagged as a possible Islamist radical by Russia. The FBI interviewed him in 2011 but did not find enough cause to continue investigating.

His name was listed on the U.S. government’s highly classified central database of people it views as potential terrorists, sources close to the bombing investigation said. The list is vast, including about 500,000 people, which means that not everyone on the list is closely monitored.

Members of Congress briefed by law enforcement and media reports citing unidentified sources indicate Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has told investigators from his hospital bed that the brothers grew radical from anti-U.S. material on the internet and acted without assistance from any foreign or domestic militant groups.

“That basically seems to be the story, but I don’t see how we can accept that,” Representative Peter King, a New York Republican on House Homeland Security Committee, told CNN.

“It may end up being the truth, but here’s a person who is a mass murderer, he’s a person who can barely speak at all. I don’t see why he would be giving up any accomplices he may have or talking about any connections his brother may have had in Chechnya or Russia,” King said on Wednesday.

In an impromptu hearing on Monday before a federal magistrate judge in Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was charged with two crimes that could result in the death penalty if he were convicted.

He is being represented by Miriam Conrad, the Boston area’s top public defender, who has handled prior cases involving men accused of plotting to fly an explosive-laden remote-controlled plane into the Pentagon and helping to finance a 2010 planned car bomb attack in New York’s Times Square.

MIT cancelled Wednesday’s classes in Collier’s honour. Authorities released videos and photos of the suspects, still unidentified at the time, on Thursday. Hours later, Collier, who had worked at MIT since January 2012, was shot and killed.

Collier and the youngest victim of the bombing attack, 8-year-old Martin Richard, were buried in private ceremonies on Tuesday.

Officials at the Cambridge mosque where Tamerlan Tsarnaev sometimes worshipped, and was known to have twice disrupted services, said on Tuesday they were unsure if they would offer burial services for him if asked by the family.

Investigators have focused on a trip to Dagestan last year by the older Tsarnaev and whether he became involved with or was influenced by Chechen separatists or Islamist extremists there.

A member of the extended family Tsarnaev said they were victims of a Russian plot to portray them as Chechen terrorists operating on U.S. soil.

The relative, Said Tsarnaev, who lives in Grozny, the capital of Russia’s volatile Chechnya region, on Tuesday accused Moscow of sending false information to the United States to frame the suspects.

(Additional reporting by Mark Hosenball, Susan Cornwell and Patricia Zengerle in Washington; Editing by Daniel Trotta and Grant McCool)

The service at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology honors 26-year-old Sean Collier, who police say was shot and killed by Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on the MIT campus on Thursday night.

The two ethnic Chechen brothers planted and detonated the two pressure-cooker bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon on April 15, killing three people and injuring 264, authorities say. Ten people lost limbs in the bombing.

Authorities released videos and photos of the suspects, still unidentified at the time, on Thursday. Hours later, Collier, who had worked at MIT since January 2012, was shot and killed.

MIT canceled Wednesday’s classes in his honor and said thousands of law enforcement agents were expected to attend the memorial from around the country.

Top U.S. security authorities faced a grilling on Tuesday about the handling of the Boston bombing investigation by lawmakers seeking answers to why Tamerlan Tsarnaev, flagged as a possible Islamist radical, was not tracked more closely.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was killed in a shootout with police on Friday and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, was captured later that day. He lies wounded in a Boston hospital charged with using weapons of mass destruction.

Investigators have focused on a trip to Dagestan last year by the older Tsarnaev and whether he became involved with or was influenced by Chechen separatists or Islamist extremists there.

Russian authorities flagged him as a possible Islamist extremist in 2011. The FBI interviewed him in Massachusetts but found no serious reason for alarm.

QUESTIONS ABOUT FLOW OF INFORMATION

Senators said after Tuesday’s briefing by FBI Deputy Director Sean Joyce and other officials that there may have been a breakdown in communication that kept authorities from tracking his apparent radicalization.

Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, the ranking Republican on the Senate intelligence committee, said the briefing raised questions about the flow of information among law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

“I think there has been some stonewalls, and some stovepipes reconstructed, that were probably unintentional, but we’ve got to review that issue again, and make sure there is the free flow of information,” he said.

“I can’t say the FBI dropped the ball. I don’t see anybody yet that dropped the ball,” Chambliss said. “That may develop.”

The wife of Tamerlan Tsarnaev is assisting authorities and in absolute shock that her husband and brother-in-law were accused of the deadly blasts, her lawyer said.

“She cries a lot,” attorney Amato DeLuca said of Katherine Russell, 24, an American-born convert to Islam who married Tsarnaev in June 2010. “She can’t go anywhere. She can’t work.”

The sisters of the bombing suspects said they too did not know what had happened to their brothers.

Ailina Tsarnaev, who lives in West New York, New Jersey, and her sister Bella issued a statement through their attorneys expressing their sadness over “such a callous act.”

“As a family we are absolutely devastated by the sense of loss and sorrow this has caused,” they said. “We don’t have any answers but we look forward to a thorough investigation and hope to learn more.”

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s condition improved to “fair” from “serious” on Tuesday as he recovered from gunshot wounds at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where in an impromptu hearing on Monday he was charged with two crimes that could result in the death penalty if he were convicted.

Recovering enough to communicate by nodding his head and writing, the younger Tsarnaev has told authorities he and his brother acted alone, learned to build the bombs on the Internet and were motivated by a desire to defend Islam because of “the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” NBC News reported.

NBC cited an unnamed U.S. counterterrorism source. Reuters could not confirm the information.

(Additional reporting by Susan Cornwell and Patricia Zengerle in Washington and David Jones in New Jersey; Writing by Ellen Wulfhorst; and Mohammad Zargham)

Mayor Tom Menino allowed those who live and work on Boylston Street in the city’s Back Bay neighborhood to return with escorts. But the area remained closed to the public after the April 15 bombings that killed three people and wounded 264.

Some $20 million has been raised in the past week to aid bombing victims and their families, officials said.

For stores along Boylston Street, the marathon with its thousands of runners and tens of thousands of spectators typically is one of the year’s high points.

The week that follows is traditionally one of the most profitable of the year, shop and restaurant owners said.

“Monday is usually the busiest day of the year,” said Chris Kourtidis, 44, the owner of Steve’s, a Greek restaurant not far from the finish line. “It’s what we wait for.”

During the city-wide lockdown on Friday as authorities hunted for suspected bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, Steve’s was one of the few places open for visitors at downtown hotels and workers stranded in Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood.

“I’m not going to let a 19-year-old kid dictate my life,” he said.

The crime scene was handed over to Boston city officials by federal authorities at a ceremony on Monday. The city has not announced when the street will be open to all.

Health and building inspectors could be seen visiting stores and buildings on Tuesday. Officials said the street would be closed by evening.

Around the perimeter of the six-block area still cordoned off by Boston police, people planted Americans flags on the grass in front of the 151-year-old Trinity Church, which has been closed to parishioners

Outside the Boylston Street office of IHRDC, a training company for the oil and gas industry, vice president Tim Donohue, 43, said revenues were largely unaffected by the closure but that he worried about the smaller retail shops.

“You can’t sell bagels if no one is here,” Donohue said.

Edward Borash, president of a Sir Speedy printing franchise on Boylston Street, described the experience as “horrible,”

“We don’t care about the lost business,” he said. “We care about what’s going on in our city.”

Feinberg said he will hold public meetings in May to discuss how the funds should be distributed. Checks will start to be distributed in June, he said.

(Additional reporting by Ross Kerber; Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst and Cynthia Osterman)

Not the carnage from Newtown, Connecticut, where 20 children and six adults were massacred by a gunman in December, igniting a national debate on gun control.

Not the impassioned pleas of Newtown survivors’ families, whose calls for expanded background checks for gun buyers so moved a pro-gun senator from West Virginia that he became their advocate.

And not the support of President Barack Obama, who was inspired by Newtown to make gun control the first major initiative of his second term.

The U.S. Senate’s key vote on Wednesday wasn’t exactly a rejection of expanded background checks, gun-control advocates were careful to point out.

Most senators – 54 – approved the measure, which polls indicated was backed by more than 80 percent of Americans. But because Republicans threatened to use a filibuster to block any gun proposal that did not get 60 votes in the 100-member Senate, the plan to expand background checks to sales made online and at gun shows fell short.

And just like that, the most aggressive push for gun control in a generation did, too.

How galling was the defeat for the new gun-control movement?

Another Senate vote on Wednesday told the story: Four months after Newtown jolted America, the 54 senators who voted to expand background checks were three less than the 57 who voted for a Republican-backed plan to expand Americans’ rights to carry concealed weapons.

That tally also was short of the 60 votes needed to clear the Senate. But taken together, the votes made a statement about Americans’ devotion to guns – there are estimated 270 million guns in circulation across the nation – and the success of the powerful gun lobby, led by the National Rifle Association.

So where do gun-control advocates go from here?

On Wednesday, amid their disappointment, frustration and anger, it was clear that the new groups who have driven the gun-control agenda since Newtown already were taking aim at the 2014 and 2016 elections.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, whose personal fortune has helped to fund a group called Mayors Against Illegal Guns, called Wednesday’s vote a “damning indictment of the stranglehold that special interests have on Washington.”

He said that his group would work to defeat opponents of gun control in the 2014 midterm elections, saying that “our ever-expanding coalition of supporters will work to make sure that voters don’t forget.”

GIFFORDS: ‘I WILL NOT REST’

In an opinion piece that was to appear in The New York Times on Thursday, former U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords – who was critically wounded in a mass shooting in Tucson, Arizona in 2011 and founded Americans for Responsible Solutions, a group that focuses on gun violence – vowed not to give up.

“On Wednesday, a minority of senators gave in to fear and blocked common-sense legislation that would have made it harder for criminals and people with dangerous mental issues to get hold of deadly firearms,” Giffords wrote.

“I will not rest until we have righted the wrong these senators have done,” she continued. “… I am asking every reasonable American to help me tell the truth about the cowardice these senators demonstrated. … I’m asking citizens to go to their offices and say, ‘You’ve disappointed me, and there will be consequences.’ “

At the White House, an angry Obama struck a similar tone.

“This was a pretty shameful day for Washington,” he said. “This effort is not over. … If this Congress refuses to listen to the American people and pass common-sense gun legislation, then the real impact is going to have to come from the voters.”

‘THEY WILL HAVE A LONG MEMORY’

For all the determination of the gun-control groups – and for all of the public support they enjoy – the Senate’s vote showed that challenging the nation’s attachment to guns or Americans’ devotion to guns is a politically tenuous exercise.

Affection for guns and hunting – and respect for the NRA, which spent $18.6 million in the 2012 campaign cycle, according to the Sunlight Foundation – was a theme throughout Wednesday’s debate.

Several senators – including West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin, who co-sponsored the background checks plan and often became emotional in praising the Newtown families – made a point of saying that they supported gun rights and had been proud to be in line with the NRA’s pro-gun platform.

Four Republicans – Ron Kirk of Illinois, Susan Collins of Maine, John McCain of Arizona and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, Manchin’s co-sponsor – backed the background checks plan.

But four Democrats from gun-friendly states – Max Baucus of Montana, Mark Begich of Alaska, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Mark Pryor of Arkansas – rejected the background checks plan. Baucus, Begich and Pryor are up for re-election in 2014.

Some gun-control advocates predicted that the issue could become a leading concern in the 2016 presidential campaign.

“Voters will wake up in the morning to find that Senate hasn’t passed background checks. They will have a long memory,” said Josh Horwitz, executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, a collection of 47 national organizations.

Horwitz said Republican senators in politically divided states such as New Hampshire, Ohio and North Carolina could see themselves at risk if they oppose more background checks.

“Mayor Bloomberg has the wherewithal to match NRA resources, which is a completely new phenomenon in the gun debate,” said Matt Bennett of Third Way, a centrist Democratic organization that has been active in the gun debate.

Last month Bloomberg footed the bill for a $12 million ad campaign, which ran in 13 states and was aimed at pressuring lawmakers to support expanded background checks.

GUN RIGHTS GET A BOOST

Gun-rights advocates acknowledge they have competition that is perhaps unprecedented, but they note that Bloomberg’s millions didn’t lead to Senate passage of the background checks plan. They note that while Newtown inspired the gun-control movement, it also boosted the NRA and its supporters.

Sales of guns and ammunition soared, fueled in part by fears that Obama’s gun-control package would make both scarce. Stock prices of gun makers such as Smith & Wesson Holding Corp and Sturm, Ruger & Co dipped after Newtown, but now are near where they were before the shootings.

And although there has been a wave of new gun-control laws in states led by Democrats, several states led by Republicans have eased gun restrictions in the months since Newtown.

In a statement the NRA praised the Senate’s action, saying that the measure would have “criminalized certain private transfers of firearms between honest citizens.”

Some gun-control advocates said they feared that they had seen their best chance for change in 20 years pass. Others said they worried it would come again soon.

“I wish Newtown was our last mass shooting,” said Daniel Webster, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research. “There are going to be more mass shootings. There are going to be more incidents where people will try to figure out what in the hell is wrong here.”

(Additional reporting by Edith Honan; Editing by David Lindsey and Lisa Shumaker)

Not the carnage from Newtown, Connecticut, where 20 children and six adults were massacred by a gunman in December, igniting a national debate on gun control.

Not the impassioned pleas of Newtown survivors’ families, whose calls for expanded background checks for gun buyers so moved a pro-gun senator from West Virginia that he became their advocate.

And not the support of President Barack Obama, who was inspired by Newtown to make gun control the first major initiative of his second term.

The U.S. Senate’s key vote on Wednesday wasn’t exactly a rejection of expanded background checks, gun-control advocates were careful to point out.

Most senators – 54 – approved the measure, which polls indicated was backed by more than 80 percent of Americans. But because Republicans threatened to use a filibuster to block any gun proposal that did not get 60 votes in the 100-member Senate, the plan to expand background checks to sales made online and at gun shows fell short.

And just like that, the most aggressive push for gun control in a generation did, too.

How galling was the defeat for the new gun-control movement?

Another Senate vote on Wednesday told the story: Four months after Newtown jolted America, the 54 senators who voted to expand background checks were three less than the 57 who voted for a Republican-backed plan to expand Americans’ rights to carry concealed weapons.

That tally also was short of the 60 votes needed to clear the Senate. But taken together, the votes made a statement about Americans’ devotion to guns – there are estimated 270 million guns in circulation across the nation – and the success of the powerful gun lobby, led by the National Rifle Association.

So where do gun-control advocates go from here?

On Wednesday, amid their disappointment, frustration and anger, it was clear that the new groups who have driven the gun-control agenda since Newtown already were taking aim at the 2014 and 2016 elections.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, whose personal fortune has helped to fund a group called Mayors Against Illegal Guns, called Wednesday’s vote a “damning indictment of the stranglehold that special interests have on Washington.”

He said that his group would work to defeat opponents of gun control in the 2014 midterm elections, saying that “our ever-expanding coalition of supporters will work to make sure that voters don’t forget.”

GIFFORDS: ‘I WILL NOT REST’

In an opinion piece that was to appear in The New York Times on Thursday, former U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords – who was critically wounded in a mass shooting in Tucson, Arizona in 2011 and founded Americans for Responsible Solutions, a group that focuses on gun violence – vowed not to give up.

“On Wednesday, a minority of senators gave in to fear and blocked common-sense legislation that would have made it harder for criminals and people with dangerous mental issues to get hold of deadly firearms,” Giffords wrote.

“I will not rest until we have righted the wrong these senators have done,” she continued. “… I am asking every reasonable American to help me tell the truth about the cowardice these senators demonstrated. … I’m asking citizens to go to their offices and say, ‘You’ve disappointed me, and there will be consequences.’ “

At the White House, an angry Obama struck a similar tone.

“This was a pretty shameful day for Washington,” he said. “This effort is not over. … If this Congress refuses to listen to the American people and pass common-sense gun legislation, then the real impact is going to have to come from the voters.”

‘THEY WILL HAVE A LONG MEMORY’

For all the determination of the gun-control groups – and for all of the public support they enjoy – the Senate’s vote showed that challenging the nation’s attachment to guns or Americans’ devotion to guns is a politically tenuous exercise.

Affection for guns and hunting – and respect for the NRA, which spent $18.6 million in the 2012 campaign cycle, according to the Sunlight Foundation – was a theme throughout Wednesday’s debate.

Several senators – including West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin, who co-sponsored the background checks plan and often became emotional in praising the Newtown families – made a point of saying that they supported gun rights and had been proud to be in line with the NRA’s pro-gun platform.

Four Republicans – Ron Kirk of Illinois, Susan Collins of Maine, John McCain of Arizona and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, Manchin’s co-sponsor – backed the background checks plan.

But four Democrats from gun-friendly states – Max Baucus of Montana, Mark Begich of Alaska, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Mark Pryor of Arkansas – rejected the background checks plan. Baucus, Begich and Pryor are up for re-election in 2014.

Some gun-control advocates predicted that the issue could become a leading concern in the 2016 presidential campaign.

“Voters will wake up in the morning to find that Senate hasn’t passed background checks. They will have a long memory,” said Josh Horwitz, executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, a collection of 47 national organizations.

Horwitz said Republican senators in politically divided states such as New Hampshire, Ohio and North Carolina could see themselves at risk if they oppose more background checks.

“Mayor Bloomberg has the wherewithal to match NRA resources, which is a completely new phenomenon in the gun debate,” said Matt Bennett of Third Way, a centrist Democratic organization that has been active in the gun debate.

Last month Bloomberg footed the bill for a $12 million ad campaign, which ran in 13 states and was aimed at pressuring lawmakers to support expanded background checks.

GUN RIGHTS GET A BOOST

Gun-rights advocates acknowledge they have competition that is perhaps unprecedented, but they note that Bloomberg’s millions didn’t lead to Senate passage of the background checks plan. They note that while Newtown inspired the gun-control movement, it also boosted the NRA and its supporters.

Sales of guns and ammunition soared, fueled in part by fears that Obama’s gun-control package would make both scarce. Stock prices of gun makers such as Smith & Wesson Holding Corp and Sturm, Ruger & Co dipped after Newtown, but now are near where they were before the shootings.

And although there has been a wave of new gun-control laws in states led by Democrats, several states led by Republicans have eased gun restrictions in the months since Newtown.

In a statement the NRA praised the Senate’s action, saying that the measure would have “criminalized certain private transfers of firearms between honest citizens.”

Some gun-control advocates said they feared that they had seen their best chance for change in 20 years pass. Others said they worried it would come again soon.

“I wish Newtown was our last mass shooting,” said Daniel Webster, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research. “There are going to be more mass shootings. There are going to be more incidents where people will try to figure out what in the hell is wrong here.”

(Additional reporting by Edith Honan; Editing by David Lindsey and Lisa Shumaker)

Not the carnage from Newtown, Connecticut, where 20 children and six adults were massacred by a gunman in December, igniting a national debate on gun control.

Not the impassioned pleas of Newtown survivors’ families, whose calls for expanded background checks for gun buyers so moved a pro-gun senator from West Virginia that he became their advocate.

And not the support of President Barack Obama, who was inspired by Newtown to make gun control the first major initiative of his second term.

The U.S. Senate’s key vote on Wednesday wasn’t exactly a rejection of expanded background checks, gun-control advocates were careful to point out.

Most senators – 54 – approved the measure, which polls indicated was backed by more than 80 percent of Americans. But because Republicans threatened to use a filibuster to block any gun proposal that did not get 60 votes in the 100-member Senate, the plan to expand background checks to sales made online and at gun shows fell short.

And just like that, the most aggressive push for gun control in a generation did, too.

How galling was the defeat for the new gun-control movement?

Another Senate vote on Wednesday told the story: Four months after Newtown jolted America, the 54 senators who voted to expand background checks were three less than the 57 who voted for a Republican-backed plan to expand Americans’ rights to carry concealed weapons.

That tally also was short of the 60 votes needed to clear the Senate. But taken together, the votes made a statement about Americans’ devotion to guns – there are estimated 270 million guns in circulation across the nation – and the success of the powerful gun lobby, led by the National Rifle Association.

So where do gun-control advocates go from here?

On Wednesday, amid their disappointment, frustration and anger, it was clear that the new groups who have driven the gun-control agenda since Newtown already were taking aim at the 2014 and 2016 elections.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, whose personal fortune has helped to fund a group called Mayors Against Illegal Guns, called Wednesday’s vote a “damning indictment of the stranglehold that special interests have on Washington.”

He said that his group would work to defeat opponents of gun control in the 2014 midterm elections, saying that “our ever-expanding coalition of supporters will work to make sure that voters don’t forget.”

GIFFORDS: ‘I WILL NOT REST’

In an opinion piece that was to appear in The New York Times on Thursday, former U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords – who was critically wounded in a mass shooting in Tucson, Arizona in 2011 and founded Americans for Responsible Solutions, a group that focuses on gun violence – vowed not to give up.

“On Wednesday, a minority of senators gave in to fear and blocked common-sense legislation that would have made it harder for criminals and people with dangerous mental issues to get hold of deadly firearms,” Giffords wrote.

“I will not rest until we have righted the wrong these senators have done,” she continued. “… I am asking every reasonable American to help me tell the truth about the cowardice these senators demonstrated. … I’m asking citizens to go to their offices and say, ‘You’ve disappointed me, and there will be consequences.’ “

At the White House, an angry Obama struck a similar tone.

“This was a pretty shameful day for Washington,” he said. “This effort is not over. … If this Congress refuses to listen to the American people and pass common-sense gun legislation, then the real impact is going to have to come from the voters.”

‘THEY WILL HAVE A LONG MEMORY’

For all the determination of the gun-control groups – and for all of the public support they enjoy – the Senate’s vote showed that challenging the nation’s attachment to guns or Americans’ devotion to guns is a politically tenuous exercise.

Affection for guns and hunting – and respect for the NRA, which spent $18.6 million in the 2012 campaign cycle, according to the Sunlight Foundation – was a theme throughout Wednesday’s debate.

Several senators – including West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin, who co-sponsored the background checks plan and often became emotional in praising the Newtown families – made a point of saying that they supported gun rights and had been proud to be in line with the NRA’s pro-gun platform.

Four Republicans – Ron Kirk of Illinois, Susan Collins of Maine, John McCain of Arizona and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, Manchin’s co-sponsor – backed the background checks plan.

But four Democrats from gun-friendly states – Max Baucus of Montana, Mark Begich of Alaska, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Mark Pryor of Arkansas – rejected the background checks plan. Baucus, Begich and Pryor are up for re-election in 2014.

Some gun-control advocates predicted that the issue could become a leading concern in the 2016 presidential campaign.

“Voters will wake up in the morning to find that Senate hasn’t passed background checks. They will have a long memory,” said Josh Horwitz, executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, a collection of 47 national organizations.

Horwitz said Republican senators in politically divided states such as New Hampshire, Ohio and North Carolina could see themselves at risk if they oppose more background checks.

“Mayor Bloomberg has the wherewithal to match NRA resources, which is a completely new phenomenon in the gun debate,” said Matt Bennett of Third Way, a centrist Democratic organization that has been active in the gun debate.

Last month Bloomberg footed the bill for a $12 million ad campaign, which ran in 13 states and was aimed at pressuring lawmakers to support expanded background checks.

GUN RIGHTS GET A BOOST

Gun-rights advocates acknowledge they have competition that is perhaps unprecedented, but they note that Bloomberg’s millions didn’t lead to Senate passage of the background checks plan. They note that while Newtown inspired the gun-control movement, it also boosted the NRA and its supporters.

Sales of guns and ammunition soared, fuelled in part by fears that Obama’s gun-control package would make both scarce. Stock prices of gun makers such as Smith & Wesson Holding Corp (SWHC.O: Quote, Profile, Research) and Sturm, Ruger & Co (RGR.N: Quote, Profile, Research) dipped after Newtown, but now are near where they were before the shootings.

And although there has been a wave of new gun-control laws in states led by Democrats, several states led by Republicans have eased gun restrictions in the months since Newtown.

In a statement the NRA praised the Senate’s action, saying that the measure would have “criminalized certain private transfers of firearms between honest citizens.”

Some gun-control advocates said they feared that they had seen their best chance for change in 20 years pass. Others said they worried it would come again soon.

“I wish Newtown was our last mass shooting,” said Daniel Webster, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research. “There are going to be more mass shootings. There are going to be more incidents where people will try to figure out what in the hell is wrong here.”

(Additional reporting by Edith Honan; Editing by David Lindsey and Lisa Shumaker)

That seemed to be the message on Thursday as two Democratic senators, Mark Begich of Alaska and Mark Pryor of Arkansas, joined 29 Republicans in voting not to allow debate on Democratic President Barack Obama’s gun-control package.

In bucking the president, Begich and Pryor – who represent conservative, gun-friendly states and face re-election next year – reflected some of the political realities that will unfold in the next several weeks as the Senate weighs the most significant gun legislation to come before Congress in two decades.

“My state is home to thousands of hunters and gun owners just like me who will not support a bill that violates their Second Amendment rights” to bear arms, Pryor told the Times Record of Fort Smith, Arkansas.

The 68-31 vote to take up the legislation also included 16 Republicans who joined with Democrats in the majority.

Several of those Republicans are skeptical of any new gun regulations. But the intense, often emotional debate for action since the massacre of 20 children and six adults at a school in Newtown, Connecticut, in December appeared to have convinced them that Obama’s plan should at least be debated and eventually voted on by the Senate.

This week, Obama traveled to Connecticut to campaign for his proposal. At a rally before 3,000 people, the president was greeted with chants of “We want a vote!”

Obama returned to Washington accompanied by 11 relatives of the Newtown victims. The family members visited with lawmakers this week in encounters that left at least one senator, Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia, in tears.

Obama’s hopes of getting a significant gun law through Congress got a boost on Wednesday with the announcement of a bipartisan compromise plan in the Senate to expand criminal background checks for prospective gun buyers.

But most Republicans and several Democrats are not enthusiastic about new gun laws. Some, including Begich, say the federal government does not properly enforce many current laws aimed at limiting gun violence.

In an interview with the Fairbanks, Alaska, Daily News Miner, Begich said Obama called him on Tuesday to discuss the gun package.

“We had a robust discussion and I reminded him of the current law and asked why are we not enforcing that,” Begich told the newspaper.

‘I LISTEN TO ARKANSAS’

Pryor has shown similar defiance in supporting gun rights.

After Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a gun-control group led by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, began airing ads in Arkansas and 12 other states urging lawmakers to back expanded background checks, Pryor made it clear he was not impressed.

“I don’t take gun advice from the mayor of New York City,” Pryor said last month. “I listen to Arkansas.”

At a time when Republicans in Arkansas have begun running ads questioning Pryor’s conservative credentials, the senator also has declined to follow other Democrats in backing gay marriage.

Whatever frustration some Democrats may feel over the stance taken by Begich and Pryor on gun control, the party is counting on the conservative senators to help Democrats maintain control of the Senate next year. Democrats currently control 55 or the 100 Senate seats.

Just a few weeks ago, Bill Clinton, the former president who was once Arkansas governor, traveled to Little Rock, Arkansas, to campaign and raise money for Pryor.

Before a crowd in his home state, Clinton praised Pryor for being “a senator who cares about his own people more than ideological purity.”

Matt Bennett of Third Way, an organization that supports expanding criminal background checks, said that “it wasn’t a surprise” that Begich and Pryor voted against moving the legislation forward.

“There was always going to be leakage from the Democratic side,” Bennett said. “What was surprising was the number of Republicans willing to vote for it.”

(Additional reporting by Roberta Rampton; Editing by David Lindsey and Peter Cooney)

“As your senator, I’ll protect your Second Amendment rights” to bear arms, Manchin, then a candidate for the Senate, said in a 2010 campaign video.

“That’s why the NRA endorsed me,” the West Virginia Democrat added, referring to the gun lobbying organization.

Manchin then promised to oppose President Barack Obama’s healthcare overhaul and “take dead aim” at an environmental bill unpopular in West Virginia’s coal country. For emphasis, he shot a hole through a copy of the bill.

On Wednesday, the senator who sought so clearly to distance himself from Obama three years ago seemed to come to the rescue of his fellow Democrat.

Manchin joined Pennsylvania Republican Senator Pat Toomey to form a compromise plan that would preserve a key part of Obama’s embattled gun-control package: a plan to expand background checks of prospective gun buyers to those who make purchases online and at gun shows.

If the legislation makes it through the Democratic-led Senate and the Republican-controlled House – a still-difficult task – the deer hunter long known as a friend to the National Rifle Association would be a pivotal player in passage of the most significant federal gun-control legislation in nearly two decades.

The measure “will not only help keep guns out of the wrong hands – it will help save lives and keep our communities safe,” said New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, one of the country’s strongest advocates for gun restrictions.

UNLIKELY ALLY OF GUN CONTROL

Being cast as a face of gun control is something new for Manchin, who along with a few other Democrats from conservative states, is typically not in step with Obama and others in his party who have pressed for more limits on guns.

Neil Berch, a political scientist at West Virginia University, said that merely discussing the idea of expanding background checks to try to keep guns from criminals and the mentally ill led Manchin to catch “a lot of flak from gun advocates within the state.”

West Virginia is not a friendly state to Obama, who has traveled across the country calling for stricter gun laws since the massacre of 20 children and six adults at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, in December.

Last May, a prison inmate who ran against Obama in West Virginia’s Democratic presidential primary got 41 percent of the vote. In last November’s election that gave Obama a second term in the White House, Republican candidate Mitt Romney won West Virginia by 27 percentage points.

In backing the compromise on background checks, Manchin made clear that the December 14 killings at Newtown’s Sandy Hook Elementary School were on his mind.

“Truly, the events at Newtown changed us all. It changed out country, our communities, our towns, and it changed our hearts and minds,” Manchin said.

POSSIBLE PRECEDENT

The support from Manchin, a former quarterback for the West Virginia University football team and a popular former governor, could make it easier for several conservative Democrats who are up for re-election in 2014 to embrace changes in gun laws.

Senators Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana are among those Democrats who have been reluctant to wade into the recent debate over gun control.

A recent poll in West Virginia indicated that Manchin’s constituents were in line with the rest of the country in wanting to expand background checks on gun buyers.

Three out of four residents surveyed by Orion Strategies in March backed universal criminal background checks – a broader change than Manchin and Toomey advocate.

In West Virginia, according to the survey, 63 percent of households had guns, compared with 41 percent nationwide.

“I have spoken this morning with all my friends in the gun state of West Virginia,” Manchin told reporters on Wednesday morning. “I think I have support from who would be the most critical gun advocates as anybody in the country. They understand that this is common sense. This is gun sense.”

(Reporting By Samuel P. Jacobs; Editing by Peter Cooney)

But Americans’ political tastes tend to run in cycles, so there is always a mix of hope and wariness when consultants at both ends of the ideological spectrum gather, as they did in Washington last week, to toast the profession’s top operatives.

Five months after Mitt Romney was thumped in the race for the White House – a loss that some placed at the feet of the small group of men and women who advised the Republican presidential challenger – the meeting of the American Association of Political Consultants threw together Democratic and Republican operatives who have dedicated their lives to undoing one another’s work.

Even those whose clients lost in November feel they have plenty to celebrate in a business that boasts of increasing sophistication as well as profits.

In a video message played at the conference’s Hall of Fame luncheon on Thursday, President Barack Obama paid wry respects to an industry that is populated by over-the-top personalities but seen by many Americans as fathering the bitter and costly ways of U.S. politics.

“There is nothing political consultants love more than celebrating their own genius,” Obama said.

The 2012 election left many of the Republican campaign professionals feeling less like geniuses after their candidate was outmaneuvered by a sitting president they had believed to be vulnerable.

“Elections make you look smarter than what you are, and more stupid,” said Ed Goeas, president of The Tarrance Group, a Republican strategy firm. “This was not an election for Republican consultants that made us look smarter.”

After the loss in November, complaints among the Republican activists directed at the party’s consultant class have been at full boil.

Appearing last month at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), a gathering for influential right-wing activists, former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin blasted party leaders such as Karl Rove, the former George W. Bush adviser, who she said have led the Republican Party astray.

“Now is the time to furlough the consultants, and tune out the pollsters, send the focus groups home and throw out the political scripts, because if we truly know what we believe, we don’t need professionals to tell us,” Palin said, calling for more staunchly conservative candidates.

(Never mind that Palin’s own political action committee doled out hundreds of thousands of dollars to consultants in 2012.)

CPAC also featured a panel with the indelicate title: “Should we shoot all the consultants now?”

Dale Emmons, a Democratic strategist from Kentucky and president of the consultants’ association, said Republicans should hold their fire.

“To those who want to shoot all the consultants, I don’t advise they do that,” Emmons said. “I know the abilities of the people I compete against are strong.”

Emmons said that perhaps no collection of advisers could have steered Romney around an incumbent president with a superior organization on the ground – one that was well positioned to take advantage of the nation’s growing minority vote, which went heavily for Obama.

Few consultants or top aides who worked with the Romney campaign appeared at last week’s gathering, which featured two days of panels – several dissecting the campaign’s failings.

Former Romney press secretary Andrea Saul, a routine presence for the campaign on cable television, and Alex Lundry, a top data researcher for Romney, did participate.

For Obama advisers, the meeting was something of a victory lap. The president’s pollster, Joel Benenson, began the conference with comments about the strength of the Democratic campaign’s polling program and the weakness of various public surveys.

His colleagues David Axelrod and David Plouffe, top strategists for Obama’s two winning presidential runs, were inducted into the association’s Hall of Fame on Thursday.

“At first, I wondered whether this was a real organization or something that Axe and Plouffe made up last week,” Obama said during his videotaped remarks.

A HAND ON THE ‘WHEEL OF HISTORY’

A quartet of Republican strategists known for steering Republicans to victories in past elections – Arthur Finkelstein, Lance Tarrance, the late Bob Teeter and the late Lee Atwater – was honored.

Atwater, who died of cancer in 1991, is best known for orchestrating often-controversial campaigns that helped turn the South increasingly toward the Republican Party in the 1980s.

His aggressive campaign style inspired a generation of Republican consultants and led critics to accuse him of race-baiting, particularly for his work as George H.W. Bush’s campaign manager in the 1988 presidential campaign.

On Friday night, the consultants handed out dozens of awards, celebrating the year’s best in advertising, fundraising and mailing.

The consultants are sensitive to the criticism that they profit from the dysfunction of U.S. politics and were eager to stress their influence on candidates who they believe can help change the country for the better.

Plouffe, who managed Obama’s 2008 campaign, said their lives amounted to putting a hand on the “wheel of history.”

On his way out the door Thursday, Plouffe stopped to chat with a fellow consultant. Plouffe warned about the potential cost of the presidential election in 2016. Last year, each side of the presidential contest spent more than $1 billion.

“By ’16, it’s going to be $2 billion,” Plouffe said.

The consultant sure hoped so.

“From your mouth,” he said, “to God’s ears.”

(Reporting by Samuel P. Jacobs; Editing by David Lindsey and Eric Beech)