WARREN, N.H. -- The daughter of a Newtown victim confronted Sen. Kelly Ayotte during her first town hall meeting since voting against expanding background checks on all commercial gun sales.
Nearly two weeks ago, the Republican lawmaker opposed a compromise negotiated by Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Pat Toomey, R-Pa. And today in this tiny hamlet in northern New Hampshire, a shouting match erupted as more than a hundred people gathered; many came to either condemn or support the senator's vote.
Among them was Erica Lafferty, whose mother, Dawn Hochsprung, was the principal of Sandy Hook Elementary School and was killed in the Dec. 14 shooting. Lafferty began by thanking Ayotte for meeting with her a few weeks earlier, in Washington, immediately after the gun vote.
"You had mentioned that day you voted, owners of gun stores that the expanded background checks would harm. I am just wondering why the burden of my mother being gunned down in the halls of her elementary school isn't more important than that," Lafferty said.
Ayotte responded: "Erica, I, certainly let me just say - I'm obviously so sorry."
"And, um, I think that ultimately when we look at what happened in Sandy Hook, I understand that's what drove this whole discussion -- all of us want to make sure that doesn't happen again," Ayotte said.
Ayotte defended her vote at the top of her remarks, pointing to her background as a prosecutor. “Where we are right now, my focus has been on wanting to improve our current background check system,” she said. “Frankly, we have fallen down on actually prosecuting gun crimes and violations of our current background check system.”
She said that addressing mental health and keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally ill were important going forward.
Ayotte and a handful of other senators are at the center of a nationwide push from gun control groups to maintain pressure for new gun laws in the wake of the Newtown shootings.
Groups on both sides — from the National Rifle Association to the gun control group backed by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg — have focused on her and others in swing states where polls show background checks are popular.
In New Hampshire, the NRA is airing ads thanking Ayotte for her vote. The Bloomberg group has ads running against her. Both sides are mobilizing like it's a political campaign — Bloomberg's group circulated printed signs reading "#ShameOnYou" at the town meeting, while Ayotte supporters held the kind of mass-hand-drawn signs often spotted at presidential events.
In a nearby yard, a local resident had placed a large, staked lawn sign with the handwritten message, "Thank You Senator Ayotte." Atop one corner was the Tea Party's preferred flag, the yellow snake with the words "Don't Tread On Me."
The charged atmosphere was a change from Ayotte's meetings - generally staid affairs that begin with a PowerPoint presentation on the budget. (She does a lot of them, as she's pledged to hold a town hall in each New Hampshire county.) At Tuesday's meeting, she stuck with the PowerPoint, but this time, the opening slides had statistics defending her gun vote.
Normally, attendees said, a few dozen residents might attend a meeting this far from the state's population centers of Manchester and Nashua, further south in the state. Warren has a population of about 900 people and town administrator Andrew Dorsett describes it as a "pro-gun" place.
At the meetings, Ayotte typically takes questions that had been pre-submitted and written down on notecards. A selected moderator chooses and reads them.
This time, though, that caused a stir. Right before Erica Lafferty spoke, Eric Knuffke, of Wentworth, N.H., stood and demanded to be allowed a question.
"You can't deny people the right to speak because they haven't filled out a card. I have a question," Knuffke shouted. Supporters of Ayotte shouted back at him.
"I do every single town meeting this way, and we have a process," Ayotte responded, though her voice - thin and high-pitched from a cold - was drowned out by the noise.
"You want to regulate that but you don't want to regulate guns," Knuffke yelled back.
"Sit down and shut up!" a member of the crowd shouted back at him, with others joining in.
As Knuffke yelled, Lafferty was sitting in the front row with her hand raised.
"Let Erica speak," said one attendee. "There's a Sandy Hook survivor here," said another.
She had submitted a question in the pile, and Ayotte made sure to let her speak. Lafferty thanked Ayotte for meeting with her the day after senators took the vote on the Manchin-Toomey before challenging her for her vote.
After her exchange with Ayotte, Lafferty stood and stormed out of the town hall.
Asked afterward why she had done so, Lafferty said: "I had had enough."
NBC's Frank Thorp contributed to this report.
