McConnell's gun safety gamble

Mitch McConnell is breaking character yet again, and this time it’s on one of the most polarizing issues in American politics.

Once known as the Senate’s “guardian of gridlock,” the GOP leader is publicly endorsing the chamber’s bipartisan framework on gun safety, wading into a topic so volatile with his base that it ended one Republican lawmaker’s career this month. While McConnell’s position didn’t surprise his GOP colleagues, it continues a pattern of cutting against his reputation and easing up, ever so slightly, in his push to stop the Democratic agenda.

McConnell...