“You can’t handle the truth.”

If Col. Nathan R. Jessup, Jack Nicholson’s character in A Few Good Men, were a pundit, that’s what he’d say about Larry Hogan’s flip flop on gun control.

During yesterday’s debate, Mr. Hogan pledged that he would enforce the new gun law and had no plans to quietly roll it back, saying he was “very supportive” of the assault weapon and background check provisions despite opposing the bill.

When Lt. Governor Brown accused him of opposing those individual provisions, Hogan said he approved of those measures. He said he didn’t support the bill because he didn’t think it was strong enough in keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally ill.

If the bill had been amended to meet Mr. Hogan’s concerns, it would not have gained a single vote. The opposition to the heart of the bill, the restrictions on gun purchases, was too strong. I can attest to that as a member of the Judiciary Committee who participated in the hearings and the debate.

Mr. Hogan would not have won the GOP primary had he said then what he says now: that he would have supported the bill if amended.

What he did say then was this, according to the Sun: “It think it’s unlikely that it’s going to be repealed, given that the Democrats in the legislature just rammed it through. But I am a strong supporter of the Second Amendment. I opposed SB 281. There are things we can do administratively at the executive branch level to change some of the definitions, and so that we’re making it easier for law-abiding citizens to own firearms.”

You can stand down, Col. Jessup.