Breitbart reported Thursday that Nebraska senator Ben Sasse crossed the aisle to join Democrats in their filibuster this week for gun control laws. As media outlets go, Breitbart is solidly in the tank for Donald Trump, and Sasse has been the leading Republican critic of Trump in the Senate, so it shouldn’t be surprising that this report is categorically false.
Sasse merely asked a question during the filibuster, which is hardly the same thing as endorsing it. Over at RedState, Caleb Howe has a good report setting the record straight.
But I would also add that Sasse supporting the gun control plans put forward this week by Democrats would be an incredibly surprising thing for him to do personally and politically. As it happens, I wrote the first national profile of Sasse three years ago, before he had even officially declared he was running for Senate. At the time, he was president of Midland College in Nebraska, and I reported on what he had done to revamp the school:
That may be a throwaway line about Midland’s shooting team, but the context for it was a long discussion we had in his office about Sasse’s support for gun ownership and enthusiasm for shooting sports. As someone who has spent real time exploring his views on the matter, to suggest that Sasse does not hold a robust view of the Second Amendment is, frankly, ludicrous.
