Even 97 percent of Republicans want tougher gun laws

In just two years, public support for tougher gun laws has catapulted by 19 points, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll taken in the wake of the massacre at a Florida high school.

Most notably, the poll found that a stunning 97 percent of Republican voters now support passing a tougher background check bill for all gun purchases.

The findings add further confirmation of just how far out of step the Republican Party and Trump are with the American people on the issue of gun safety, as they blindly push the NRA’s radical agenda.

The gun lobby adamantly opposes any such measures. And in 2013, following the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, Republicans did the NRA’s bidding and filibustered a vote on such a bill.

Elsewhere in the new poll, the findings paint a completely one-sided American view of guns in our culture — a view that the GOP refuses to accept.

By a margin of 70 percent to 20 percent, Americans say that mass killings by U.S. citizens is a bigger problem than mass killings by people from other countries. Nearly 70 percent of respondents, including 79 of women, support a complete ban on the sale of assault weapons in the U.S.

And 67 percent say it’s just too easy to buy guns in this country.

Meanwhile, the GOP is trying to make it even easier.

Since taking office, Trump has made it easier for mentally ill people to purchase guns; scrubbed tens of thousands of fugitives from the FBI’s background check system, making it easier for them to buy firearms; and supported Republican efforts in Congress to clear the way for consumers to buy silencers.

This represents an extraordinarily radical and reckless turn the Republican Party has taken on guns.

Back in 1999, 31 Senate Republicans voted in favor of mandating background checks. And in 1994, 42 House Republicans voted for President Bill Clinton’s crime bill, which went even further and included a ban on assault weapons.

Elsewhere, a survey this week from Washington Post-ABC News found that nearly 60 percent of Americans “strongly” say the Republican-led Congress and Trump are not doing enough to stop mass shooters.

The GOP is completely, and dangerously, out of touch. And that’s the message students in Parkland, Florida, are now making, every chance they get.

As for the obstructionist NRA, a survey last year found that 67 percent of gun owners said they either strongly or somewhat agree that the NRA has shifted from an organization dedicated to gun safety to one “overtaken by lobbyists and the interests of gun manufacturers and lost its original purpose and mission.”

More and more, the gun lobbying is being exposed. Even Republicans think it’s entirely out of step.