yeah, because background checks are as popular as anything gets in american public opinion. there is connistent polling showing over 90% of the public believes everyone who buys a gun, no matter where they buy it, should have to undergo a background checks and that includes roughly 90% of republicans and roughly 90% of gun owners but the problem isn t the public sentiment but it is the institutional hold of the nra on the republican party particularly in more rural small states. if you go back to 2013 when there was the vote in the senate on universal background checks after the school shootings in connecticut, the senator you assign half of the state population to each senator and the senators who voted for it represented 195 million people and the senators who voted against it represented 120 million people. that is about as decisive as it gets in a democracy and yet it was blocked because of the of the roll of the filibuster and the near universal republican opposition. that i