Carolyn Kaster / AP

Mark and Jackie Barden, who lost their son Daniel in the Newtown school shooting, and their children Natalie and James stand with Nicole Hockley, center, whose son Dylan was slain, and Jeremy Richman, rear, father of Avielle, as President Barack Obama speaks in the Rose Garden of the White House on April 17, 2013, about measures to reduce gun violence and a bill to expand background checks during gun purchases that was defeated in the Senate.

NBC News reports:

Despite an impassioned push by President Barack Obama and an emotional lobbying effort by the families of mass shooting victims, proponents of a compromise measure to expand gun background checks on Wednesday fell six votes short of passage in the Senate. The vote on the amendment was 54 to 46. Sixty votes were needed for the amendment to be adopted.

"All in all, this was a pretty shameful day for Washington," Obama said sternly, urging backers of gun control to continue the fight.

Shannon Stapleton / Reuters

Children from Sandy Hook Elementary School make their way to their new school in Monroe, Conn., on Jan. 3.

Jessica Hill / AP

A bus traveling from Newtown, Conn., to Monroe stops in front of 26 angels along the roadside on the first day of classes for Sandy Hook Elementary School students since the Dec. 14 shooting.

Jessica Hill / AP

The entrance of the new Sandy Hook Elementary School is guarded by a police road block on the first day of classes since the Dec. 14 attacks.

Slideshow: Newtown school massacre

Jessica Hill / AP

A nation mourns after the second deadliest school shooting in U.S. history left 20 children and six staff members dead at Sandy Hook Elementary.

Launch slideshow

Hundreds of the children who escaped the harrowing attack on their elementary school in Newtown, Conn., last month head back to classes on Thursday for the first time since a gunman killed 20 of their schoolmates and six staff members.

School officials are preparing for droves of anxious parents to join the fleet of buses carting children to the new Sandy Hook Elementary School established in the neighboring town of Monroe.

Chalk Hill school, a former middle school, was overhauled especially for the students from the Sandy Hook School shooting.

• Sandy Hook students head back to school to search for the 'new normal'