The U.S. Senate is set to adjourn Thursday afternoon for a 10-day recess without taking any concrete steps to address the nation's deadly epidemic of gun violence, following a pattern of inaction that has prevailed in the decade since the worst school shooting in the nation's history in Newtown, Connecticut.
In the aftermath of the second-deadliest school shooting on record—the massacre of 19 children and two adults at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas earlier this week—there is little hope that Congress will move decisively to alter the country's lax gun laws as Republicans beholden to the National Rifle Association and Democrats committed to the legislative filibuster continue to obstruct progress.
