• by ThinkProgress
• April 18, 2013

Written by Igor Volsky

“Shame on you!” Patricia Maisch and Lori Haas yelled in rapid succession at the 46 senators who had just voted to kill a compromise amendment to expand background checks for gun purchases at gun shows or online. The women were sitting in the gallery with a large group of gun violence victims as the Senate responded to the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut by defeating the measure advocates and law enforcement officials consider crucial to keeping firearms out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill.

The pair has first-hand experience with the consequences of the broken system. In 2011, Maisch was hailed as a hero for disarming Tucson shooter Jared Loughner by preventing him from reloading a fresh magazine. Haas’ daughter Emily was shot twice during the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007 and survived, leading her to become a proponent of stronger gun regulations. But on Wednesday afternoon, the two women faced tighter scrutiny for interrupting a Senate proceeding than many individuals seeking to purchase guns.

As they left the Senate gallery, a police officer approached and asked them to follow him. The three walked downstairs to a public hallway, where they were peppered with questions: “What’s your name?” “Where are you from?” “What are your Social Security numbers?” The officer left to run a background check on the women, who were instructed to sit on a bench. Another uniformed officer watched over them, even escorted Haas to the bathroom and told her she couldn’t lock the stall door.

Sitting there, waiting for the officer to return, Haas stewed over the failed vote. “I just can’t fathom that these people don’t have a heart,” she told ThinkProgress in a phone interview. “If they had seen, just one miniscule of the pain I’ve seen from the Virginia Tech families and so many other families that I’ve worked with in the last 6 years, they couldn’t help but want to do something about stopping gun violence.”

An hour and a half later, another law enforcement official approached and quizzed the the two women further. He asked them about their intentions and where they were from, why they were in D.C., how long they planned to stay and when they were leaving.

The entire ordeal stretched for almost two hours — approximately 115 minutes longer than a background check at a federal gun dealer. Haas noted the irony of undergoing hours of questioning while permitting gun purchases without any screening at gun shows or online.

“The irony is not lost on me and it’s not lost on the American public,” Haas said. “Very ironic that an hour and a half investigation into two women shouting in the Senate gallery takes place and yet real criminals and other prohibited purchasers get willy nilly access to fire arms.”

This post was originally published by ThinkProgress.

Read more: background check, gun control, lori haas, Newtown, patricia maisch

Photo: tuchodi/flickr

By Tabassum Zakaria and Mark Hosenball

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Russia asked the FBI in early 2011 to investigate Boston bombing suspectTamerlan Tsarnaev out of concern he had embraced radical Islam and was going to travel to Russia to join underground groups, U.S. law enforcement sources said on Saturday.

Russia's Federal Security Service, or FSB, made a request for checks on Tsarnaev - who was killed after a shootout with police on Thursday - to help an investigation of its own, a U.S. government source said.

The Russians were not tipping off the FBI about a plot in the United States or any threat posed to U.S. interests, a law enforcement and national security source said on condition of anonymity.

The fact that there was no warning about an attack in the United States may help shield the Obama administration, spy agencies and law enforcement from criticism that they failed to see the danger from Tsarnaev, 26, and his younger brother, Dzhokhar, who are suspected of carrying out the twin bombings that killed three people and injured over 170 on Monday at the Boston Marathon.

Russia is battling Islamist militants in the volatile North Caucasus where the Tsarnaev brothers - who are ethnic Chechens - have family ties. But the number of tips from Moscow on possible terrorism cases is "not that many," a senior U.S. law enforcement source said.

The FBI said a foreign government had raised the alarm over Tsarnaev but did not comment on whether it was Russia. The bureau said it "did not find any terrorism activity, domestic or foreign" after interviewing Tsarnaev and his family, and checking his travel records and Internet activity in 2011. Those results were given to the foreign government in the summer of 2011, the FBI said.

The FBI found nothing to substantiate Russian allegations that Tsarnaev was a follower of radical Islam who was preparing to travel to Russia to join unspecified radical groups, a national security source said.

Tsarnaev flew to Russia the following year. Official records show he left New York's JFK airport on January 12, 2012 for Moscow and returned to the United States on July 17, 2012. It is unclear what he did while in Russia or whether he traveled elsewhere during that period.

Republican U.S. Representative Dana Rohrabacher said Tsarnaev may well have been trained overseas by "radical elements."

"The two young men directly involved in this terrorist attack were both Chechen and clearly influenced by radical Islam. One of them may well have been trained with terrorist weapons by radical elements overseas," said Rohrabacher, a member of the House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs.

"The Chechen connection indicates we should work more closely with Russia and other nations who are also suffering the same kind of mayhem we have seen in Boston," he said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has not commented on the identity of the two suspects, who moved to the United States more than a decade ago after briefly living in Russia's volatile southern region of Dagestan.

Instead, he and Obama made positive statements about cooperation on counterterrorism in a phone conversation on Friday, suggesting both sides see an opportunity to improve strained relations between their countries.

(Additional reporting by John Shiffman; Editing by Alistair Bell and Paul Simao)