Top Links: Polls, Republican voters and NRA households love background checks – so why don’t GOP politicians?

Today’s top story: New poll numbers show that background checks are the most uncontroversial aspect of the gun control debate, no matter a voter’s political persuasion. Yet, Republican politicians and NRA flunkies won’t listen.

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• Republicans and Democrats agree: Background checks are good things. (The Fix)

• Ditto 74% NRA households, who favor private background checks. (Pew Research)

• Yet, the Senate Judiciary Committee could only pass its background checks bill out of committee on a party line vote. (The Washington Post)

• Ditto, the Colorado Senate. (Think Progress)

• Have some time on your hands? Then have some fun with Pew Research’s interactive tool that lets you dig deep into data on which groups are for/against gun control and gun rights – and how that’s changed over the last 20 years. (Pew Research)

• Jeffrey Goldberg, on injecting emotion in the gun control debate: “Many conservatives and Second Amendment absolutists see licensing and background checks as stalking horses for a government-mandated gun seizure and the eventual imposition of tyranny. This kind of thinking is hysterical. But many liberals see advocates of individual self- defense as radical libertarians who care not at all for the greater good, and therefore seek the forcible disarmament of others, even those who use firearms responsibly. This represents a profound misreading, and mistrust, of the public.” (Jeffrey Goldberg)