AP Photo/Steven Senne

Cory Booker is desperately trying to back away from his “I am Spartacus” moment during the Kavanaugh hearings. To do that, he’s delving into the deep slime of anti-gun rhetoric.

In particular, he’s using the bodies of dead children as a soapbox.

More than 9 in 10 U.S. voters want anyone buying a gun from anywhere to undergo a background check.

Yet there is no indication that the Senate will take up legislation to do just that, even as the House acted last month and passed its first gun control bill in a quarter-century. Nor is a ban on assault weapons on the agenda, even though two-thirds supported it in a February Quinnipiac University poll.

That’s angered U.S. Sen. and presidential candidate Cory Booker, who supports both measures and once joined a filibuster to force votes on the issue.

“There’s something really wrong with a society that can’t get things done where overwhelmingly the majority of people agree that we need to get it done,” Booker, D-N.J., said Tuesday.

“I’m tired of seeing sidewalk shrines to dead children in my community and in cities all across America and people doing nothing to put gun safety laws in place that we agree with in terms of getting it to a vote we agree with in terms of getting it to a vote in this body.”

First, a bit about the poll cited.

It asks, “Do you support or oppose requiring background checks for all gun buyers?” The problem is, the media has over-represented the numbers of people who are buying guns in face-to-face transfers, calling them things like “internet sales” and the like. A lot of people, including Republicans, don’t understand much about firearm sales. That’s because the media has them convinced that there are tons of unregulated sales taking place, and that’s not the case.

However, lawmakers who oppose universal background checks also understand some things that the rank and file member of the public doesn’t.

For example, they understand that when you create laws, you have to write them so that they govern multiple situations. You have to craft them so those who break the law can’t wiggle out easily.

In the case of a universal background check, you have two choices. One is to leave a huge “loophole” open so people can give a gun to a family member as a present or bequeath it to them. That means you can defend yourself from prosecution by making the case that no, you didn’t sell a gun to someone illegally. You just gave them a firearm. The prosecution then has to prove you sold it, which can be more difficult than it would seem.

The other would be to clamp it down so every transfer of any kind has to go through a background check.

That’s where you start to lose people.

You see, look at the question again. “Do you support or oppose requiring background checks for all gun buyers?” A lot of people will support that. Maybe not the Second Amendment absolutists, but most people will. What they don’t support is not being able to leave Grandpa’s old shotgun to their kids.

The part that bothers me is that I think Booker knows that. He knows it and he’s pretending that it doesn’t matter.

Instead, he’ll invoke dead children, talk about “sidewalk shrines” and pretend he’s the moral one here, all while using the blood of the innocent to advance his agenda.

Frankly, it’s disgusting, especially because he knows damn good and well what that poll is really saying.

All Booker is trying to do is the typical anti-gun tactic of trying to leverage emotion into political capital. He doesn’t want you to think rationally about this. That’s why Booker’s talking about dead children. If there’s one thing all decent people hate it’s the idea of murdered children, so he’s trying to capitalize on that.

What he doesn’t want you to do is to think. He doesn’t want you to think about why Senate Republicans are opposing this bill. He doesn’t want you to think about any of it.

After all, I’m fairly sure he doesn’t think all that often, so why should you?