THE HOUSE HAS overwhelmingly passed legislation to let police enforce our seat belt law — twice.

Thirty of the 46 senators support the measure, which has consistently increased seat belt use, and thus lowered the death rate, in every state that has passed it.

The latest polls show 60 percent of South Carolinians support primary seat belt enforcement. Voters are getting increasingly angered by the Senate’s refusal to act. And every day that the 16 opponents refuse to allow a vote, more bills back up on the calendar, and the chance of passing tort reform and tax cuts and dozens of other measures important to those 16 senators — and to the other 30, as well as the special interests who bankroll all their campaigns — diminishes.

The pressure on those 16 obstructionists should be intense. Passing the legislation should be a slam-dunk. All the majority of senators has to do is show up for work every day — and stay on the job until opponents’ lungs wear out or their bladders wear out or the many forces supporting this bill and others convince them to let the Senate get on with the business of the state.

But this is South Carolina. And as is too often the case, it is the people fighting to improve our state who are aching to give in. Last week, several senators who say they support a real seat belt law started complaining about how this debate is dragging on too long, about how it is blocking work on other important legislation. Amazingly, their solution is to throw up their hands in defeat — in defeat, despite the fact that they outnumber opponents two-to-one on this.

It’s true that this bill has been at the top of the Senate’s agenda for the entire year. But until the week before last, senators had routinely skipped over it and worked on other bills. Even since supporters stopped allowing this, the Senate still has spent precious little time on the matter. So far this year, they’ve stayed on the job, sitting through the debate, for less time than most of us spend on the job in three days. That’s right, this debate has “dragged on” for about 20 hours — over the course of three months.

This is ridiculous. It is time to say we are not going to allow the minority to dictate state policy; we are not going to allow obstructionists to win simply by being obstructionist. That’s what we’ve always done in this state. And look where it’s gotten us.

Putting our foot down is not an outrageous idea. The good and noble idea behind the Senate’s filibuster rules is to make sure the minority has a chance to be heard, to try to change minds; it is not to thwart the will of the majority. There was a time when a third of the Senate fighting legislation favored by the other two-thirds would lose, because the Senate would stay at work all day long, all night if needed, day after day. Do this for a week, and there’s little doubt that opponents would back down, or else supporters would force them to (as the rules already allow them to do, if they so choose).

Let’s be very clear: Any senators who agree to give up on this bill care more about their own convenience and comfort and about getting along than they care about the lives of innocent South Carolinians. They can claim they support a real seat belt law all they want, but it’s not true. Not if they give in.

Seat belt opponents cannot win this fight unless supporters let them. Supporters cannot lose this fight unless they choose to.