Opinion

Senate judiciary panel's Republicans remain true to NRA None of them voted for universal background checks for gun buyers

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 (many of them at gun shows) would have to be run through the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).

It passed out of committee on a straight partisan vote.

That's right - not one Republican on the committee mustered the guts to vote for something 91 percent of the country supports. Something that would inarguably save lives and keep at least some guns from reaching the wrong hands.

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.

Schumer has been negotiating for weeks with a group of Republicans, most notably Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, to build a bipartisan coalition on universal background checks. He calls it the "sweet spot" of the gun-control debate where he believes compromise is possible.

This week, Coburn said "outside interests" were responsible for the failure of his negotiations with Schumer.

Negotiations broke down when Coburn refused to support the retention of background-check records.

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.''

Schumer added, "It's sad. Right after Newtown there was the view that maybe the right place we could all come together on was background checks.''

It would be marginally 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.

By definition, these senators are more worried about their allegiance to the NRA (and in some cases, challenges from their right flanks) than they are about their responsibilities to their constituents and to the country as a whole.

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.