the public. all the proposal says is that every commercial gun sale in this country should have a background check attached to it. right now you go through a background check if you buy a gun in a gun store. but in many states if you buy a gun online or at a gun show, you don t have a background check. so, what happens is the criminals go online. they go to the gun shows. people prohibited to buy weapons buy them there and sell them illegally out of a trunk of a car. and i m going to be honest with you, we don t have republican support for that in the senate. we have every democrat willing to support it. we only have a handful of republicans. so, it is probably impossible to pass that proposal, despite the fact that if you ask the american public if they support expanded background checks to cover all commercial sales, 90% of americans support that. and that is evidence of how wayward the republican party has gone. but we might be able to do a piece of manchin/toomey.
how to do that as a country. and i do want to point out in some new political polling that we had just out today after this tragedy is that congress, the members of congress, the members of senate who aren t voting for some of these things that might come up, are out of step with the american people. you have 88% of american voters saying they strongly or somewhat support requiring background checks on all gun sales. you have 75% saying they are creating a national data base about each gun sale. and 67% say they are in favor of banning assault style weapons. and so now they re looking to congress to do something. but where are the ten votes from republicans to make this happen. and also where the 50 democrat votes to get rid of the filibuster for that. that is what advocates are asking today. eugene daniels reporting from the white house. thank you very much. willie, those numbers that you heard, flash poll, those number are consistent with where they ve been over the past
has now passed twice. it s been pending in the senate for about four years, actually. that s to expand the brady law and to close the charleston loophole. both of these laws are supported by over 90% of americans and basically stand for the proposition that before any gun sale happens in this country, a background check must be completed. this is not an unreasonable restraint on firearm ownership. it s been upheld by every court that looks at it. the senate needs to act. chris murphy is leading the way on that. i hope we ll get it to the senate floor in the next couple of weeks. we also have to grapple with go ahead, sorry. no, no. i was saying, you mentioned senator chris murphy. he says he d like to spend the next seven to ten days talking with republicans to see if there s room for agreement on some kind of bipartisan agreement instead of just rushing to take votes on things
part of the policy platform. we re seeing gun manufacturers and their allies try to roll back things like a background check on every gun sale or gun safety training. this crime wave that we re seeing is the logical outcome of having 400 million guns in a country with too few gun law. to the point of that op-ed if more guns and less gun laws make us safer, we would be the safest country in the world. we have a 25% higher homicide rate than any pure nation. the situation in buffalo, there was an armed guard there. unfortunately, a guard with a handgun is just no match for a white supremists who has been radicalized online and ballistics gear. it s not going to play out that way in the real world. there s a lot there. scott i want to let you respond to that. i want to pick up on that number. approximately 400 million guns in circulation in the u.s.
call out the elephant in the room, and that is the number of guns that continues to flood across this country. so i was looking at some numbers just before we went on. so, you see increases of a few million background checks. if you look at the fbi s division that conducts the background checks for firearm sales, in 2019 i m sorry, 2018, there were over 26 million background checks that year. that s one background check for each permit, application, or gun sale. in 2019, the number went up to 28 million. and then from 2019 to 2020, the number of checks went from 28 million to 39 million background checks just in that one year. so, that wave, that infusion of guns on to the streets, into people s homes, into people s hands has an inextricable impact on violent crime and i think we re seeing the results of that right now. we have reporting today on the challenges in recruiting and retaining law enforcement