More than 90 percent of Americans support universal background checks for gun purchasers, according to a brand-new ABC News/Washington Post poll.
Wayne LaPierre and the NRA do not. (Even though they did, right after Columbine, when they cynically judged it was safe to give lip service to universal background checks because there was no way Congress would pass them.)
Now, after the horror of Sandy Hook, LaPierre and the NRA leadership have been resolute in opposing the expanded background checks that more than 9 in 10 Americans want.
But surely 91 percent of the public trumps the high-capacity cash magazine the NRA keeps emptying at their friends in Congress, right?
Wrong.
On Tuesday the Senate Judiciary Committee advanced a measure calling for universal background checks, which means even private firearms transactions would have to be run through the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System.
It passed out of committee on a straight partisan vote.
That's right — not one Republican mustered the guts to vote for something 91 percent of the country supports. Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat who has made closing the gun show loophole a post-Sandy Hook personal priority, had some choice words for his Republican colleagues on Judiciary.
When GOP committee members argued Tuesday that criminals would get guns regardless of expanded background checks, Schumer snapped, "You don't use that on any other law — on terrorism, on robbery, on murder, on money laundering — we never see the argument that we shouldn't have laws because bad people will get around them anyway. Only on this issue."
It would be more understandable if this had been a House vote, where many lawmakers are elected from severely gerrymandered districts that are, in fact, outliers in most national policy debates.
But senators, after all, represent everyone in their states. How do you get to 91 percent without support in red states? The answer is, you don't.
That's not just sad — it's shameful.
Remember the names: Chuck Grassley, Iowa. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, Texas, who are locked in some sort of a contest to see which one can out-extreme the other. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina. Jeff Sessions, Alabama. Orrin Hatch and Michael Lee, Utah. Jeff Flake, Arizona.
Profiles in courage.
David McCumber is the Hearst Newspapers' Washington bureau chief.