According to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, 35 people are murdered daily by guns in America. This is the equivalent of a Virginia Tech massacre every day. “Yet” he said “while some criminals are busy evading background checks at gun shows, Congress continues to turn a blind eye to this glaring gap in our nation’s gun laws.”

That is because their eyes are filled with visions of high rankings from the National Rifle Association… and their hearts filled with fear of NRA opposition.

Ignoring this gap is very bad policy, but advocating the rights of terrorists to purchase guns is irresponsible and absurd. But that is what U.S. Senators Lindsey Graham and Susan Collins did in a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security Committee.

Senator Frank Lautenberg sponsored a bill that would prohibit gun sales to people on the FBI terrorist watch list. That sounds to me like a no-brainer. But Graham opposed the bill, saying that “I think you’re going too far here…”  and then he shifted his argument to his opposition to giving terrorists captured in the United States their Constitutional rights of a Miranda warning.

So, wrote Gail Collins in the New York Times, if you are on the FBI terrorist watch “the authorities can keep you from getting on a plane but not from purchasing an AK-47.” Graham said this was the case because “when the founders sat down and wrote the Constitution, they didn’t consider flying.” He really said that. He really did.

The consequences of this policy, according to Gail Collins is that “1,119 people on the watch list have been able to purchase weapons over the last six years. One of them bought 50 pounds of military grade explosives.”

I used to believe that Graham and Susan Collins were thoughtful people willing to put partisanship aside and do what is best for America. But the fact is, they are mere partisans eager to oppose and vilify proposals from the President of the United States and their Democratic colleagues, while marching in lock step with the NRA.