As you can imagine, this reality has not gone over well with the gun control lobby. Igor Volsky, the co-founder of Guns Down America, told The Hill that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) promised the anti-gun crowd that the upper chamber would hold a vote on universal background check legislation in the summer of last year. However, the bills never made it to the floor.

“We’ve been promised by Senate Majority Leader Schumer as far back as March, April that there would be a vote during the summer, then it got pushed back even further. They’re using this familiar playbook of making all kinds of promises during the campaign and then fail to deliver anything when they’re in power,” Volsky complained.

Several lawmakers in the Senate and House told The Hill that the gun control agenda is not exactly top of mind for Democrats:

Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), who represents a state where hunting is a popular pastime and where nearly two-thirds of adults live in homes with firearms, said the subject of gun control legislation hardly ever came up for discussion within the Senate Democratic Caucus during Biden’s first year in office.

“It hasn’t come up in conversation in the last year,” he told The Hill shortly before Thanksgiving.

“No, there hasn’t been any changes whatsoever,” he said, pointing to the lack of Republican support as the major reason why background checks legislation hasn’t come to the floor.

He said the staunch Republican opposition “makes it very difficult” to get something through the Senate.

The House did manage to pass two gun control bills in March of 2021, but the Senate has not even bothered to take them up. One of the provisions would expand background checks. Another would allow the FBI 10 days to run checks on those purchasing a firearm. As you’re reading this, both proposals are gathering dust in the back room of the Senate chamber.

Nevertheless, President Biden attempted to use the anniversary of the Sandy Hook shooting to revive support for his gun control agenda. During a speech Monday, The Hill reported, he mentioned that he asked Congress to grant $500 million in funding to decrease violent crime and increase funding for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and U.S. Marshals.

“Congress must do much more — beginning with requiring background checks on all gun sales, banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and eliminating immunity for gun manufacturers,” he said.

It has been almost a decade since the Senate held an extended floor debate on gun control. The last one occurred in April of 2013, shortly after an assailant shot and killed 20 children and six staff members at Sandy Hook.

Upon taking office in 2021, Democratic senators acknowledged it would be nearly impossible to pass Biden’s ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. However, “they thought they could negotiate a compromise to expand backgrounds checks,” according to The Hill. But fortunately, negotiations fell through.

The reason why Senate Democrats are not taking up the anti-gun legislation seems apparent. There is no way they will be able to persuade 10 Republican senators to support an expansion of background checks. It would be yet another legislative loss, at a time when Democrats are in desperate need of a win. Focusing on areas where they might have a chance at victory seems to be their focus at the moment, and for good reason.

President Biden’s approval ratings have remained in the toilet since the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, and they are not climbing back up anytime soon. Moreover, Democrats have not passed any major legislation since the infrastructure bill a few months ago. With the midterm elections on the horizon, pushing gun control does not seem to be the best use of the party’s time. However, this does not mean the battle is over. It might be a while before Democrats are in a position to make another push to curtail gun ownership, but we can be sure they have not given up.