The Free Press

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Common sense on gun violence measures has returned to the Republican Party in Minnesota and it’s named Sen. Scott Jensen and Sen. Paul Anderson.

The two GOP members of the Minnesota Senate joined several Democrats backing a bill that would expand background checks for gun sales in a common sense way that 90 percent of the public support.

It must have taken a great deal of courage for the senators to back the plan in light of clear opposition from GOP Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka and other members of the Republican Party whose intractability on enhancing public safety is astounding.

Jensen, R-Chaska and Anderson, R-Plymouth, came out with Democrats Sen. Susan Kent, Woodbury, and Sen. Matt Little, Lakeville, proposing legislation that would require background checks on nearly all gun sales and transfers and require gun owners to report lost or stolen guns. The background checks would exempt transfers between families and temporary uses like shooting competitions.

Gazelka’s response was disappointing saying somehow, by some odd reasoning, background checks “don’t work,” and that there is no chance of the bill passing. With a one-vote majority in the Senate, Jensen and Anderson could turn the vote in the Senate to pass background checks by siding with Democrats. We hope they do so.

We’re equally disappointed with GOP House Speaker Kurt Daudt who doesn’t appear to be concerned his public safety committee tabled a similar background check bill that also has Republican support. Rep. Dario Anselmo, R-Edina, was co-author of that bill along with DFLer Rep. Dave Pinto, a St. Paul prosecutor.

The House public safety committee is led by Rep. Brian Johnson, R-Cambridge, and he chaired an important committee hearing on improving background checks recently where the issue was tabled without discussion. The vote to table the measure was 9-7 in favor, with another Republican — Rep. Keith Franke of St. Paul Park — bucking his Republican colleagues and voting to move the bill forward. All Democrats on the committee, including Mankato DFLer Jack Considine, voted against tabling the bill and getting some action to prevent gun violence.

The Republican leadership’s resistance to gun background checks is a troubling sequence of events in the wake of the shootings at Parkland high school in Florida that left 17 people dead. Since the bipartisan bill was introduced about a year ago, 1,300 children have died from guns, according to testimony at the committee.

Jensen was criticized by the gun lobby as having changed his position on background checks. He admitted as much, saying “But how many shootings have taken place since then.” He said he wasn’t worried about an attack by the gun lobby come election time. “My conscience is my guide,” he said.

Jensen and Anderson have become leaders on this important issue and the rest of the GOP caucus should follow. Both have ties to the NRA but see the critical need to address gun violence in wake of continued mass shootings, now taking lives of school children, over and over again.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.