The first order of business for Democrats was clear. On Monday, Congress returned from its August recess, and the party’s leaders ― House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer ― rushed to hold a press conference demanding action on gun control legislation following a trio of high-profile mass shootings during lawmakers’ monthlong break. “We’re here today for one simple reason,” Schumer declared. “Too many Americans are losing their lives to gun violence.” The fix, Pelosi said, was to pass the same universal background check legislation in the Senate that already passed in the House. Schumer and Pelosi’s answer to gun violence, and an epidemic of mass shootings, is the same answer Democrats have been giving since at least 2013: universal background checks for gun purchases, and potentially a ban on assault weapons. As a political strategy, it’s worked: Both policies are supported by a majority of Americans, and Democratic support for gun control ― and the perception that Republicans are in hock to an increasingly unpopular National Rifle Association ― was a key reason suburban voters helped Democrats win back control of the House in 2018. But that policy consensus may be melting away, a sign of just how quickly the political conversation around guns has shifted in favor of Democrats. Presidential candidates, led by New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, are pushing for more aggressive action aimed at reducing the number of guns in American hands: a national gun licensing system and a mandatory buyback of assault weapons. “It’s pretty clear that we have too many guns. It’s too easy to buy them. It’s far too easy to possess weapons that were designed for war,” said O’Rourke, who debuted a more ambitious gun control plan, including a mandatory assault weapon buyback, after a mass shooter killed 22 people in a possible hate crime at a Walmart in his hometown of El Paso. Earlier in the campaign, O’Rourke had said even gun licensing may go “too far.” Now? “They don’t go far enough,” O’Rourke said of background checks in a phone interview. “I understand the logic of it, and at one point it was compelling enough for me. There’s a lot of consensus between Republicans and Democrats, between gun owners and non-gun owners.”

MARK RALSTON via Getty Images Former Texas Rep. Beto O'Rourke has refocused his presidential campaign around gun control.

Gun control is expected to be a major topic during Thursday night’s presidential debate in Houston. In addition to the massacre in El Paso, a second mass shooting in the state, along with one in Dayton, Ohio, has elevated the question of how to combat gun violence ― already a major issue in the Democratic primary ― to the forefront of voters’ minds. Even if moderators don’t aggressively question candidates on it, O’Rourke is expected to make it a focus. Those more aggressive positions are supported by a majority of Democrats, according to a new HuffPost/YouGov poll. But more moderate members of the party, including some first-term members of Congress, are arguing these positions ― unthinkable just a few years ago ― are overly aggressive and unnecessary, and could turn an issue where Democrats clearly have the upper hand into a political dead weight. It’s also unclear if a Democratic Congress could muster the votes to pass the proposals ― the House is struggling to pass an assault weapons ban. “The NRA is going to make it sound like you’re making every single person’s gun illegal,” said Lanae Erickson, the senior vice president for social policy and politics at the centrist group Third Way, which has highlighted the political advantages of talking about gun control in the past. “I just don’t think it’s helpful. Why are we talking about this when it’s never going to happen anytime soon on the federal level?” The answer is simple: because voters, especially potential primary voters, are responding. Gun licensing, the preferred policy response of many gun control advocates, has been embraced by Booker and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Seventy-one percent of registered voters, and 91% of Democrats, said they support “requiring individuals to obtain a license before being able to purchase a gun.” Fifty-two percent of all registered voters support a voluntary buyback of assault weapons, including 80% of Democrats. The politics of a mandatory assault weapon buyback, where the government would theoretically force assault weapon owners to hand over their weapons in exchange for cash, is trickier: 42% of registered voters support a mandatory program, while 44% oppose it. Still, it remains a political winner in a Democratic primary: 69% of Democrats support a mandatory buyback. While buybacks have received much of the attention ― California Sen. Kamala Harris and Booker endorsed them when talking with reporters in New Hampshire this past weekend, with even Pete Buttigieg, a more moderate candidate, declining to rule out a proposal ― many gun policy advocates are more excited about gun licensing. “I expect virtually every presidential candidate to have something positive to say about gun licensing. It’s effective, popular, and already being implemented in red and blue states,” said Peter Ambler, the executive director of Giffords, which is named after the former congresswoman who was shot in 2011. “I don’t see how this could possibly hurt a Democratic nominee in 2020.”

The era of triangulation is over, this notion that ... if we ask for small things, we’ll be able to work with the other side and make progress on these small things. Igor Volsky, executive director of Guns Down America Action Fund