Pressed by CNN’s Candy Crowley, Connecticut senator Richard Blumenthal admitted that nothing in the Democrats’ current gun-control legislation would have prevented December’s massacre in Newtown, Conn., which left 20 children and six adults dead. He indicated that the hopes of gun-control’s strongest proponents now lie in offering amendments to the legislation, though those amendments are unlikely to pass the Senate.

“How would anything in the bill, as it currently stands, have stopped anything that went on in Newtown?” Crowley asked. “The majority leader has assured me and other proponents of these measures that we can offer amendments on both the assault-weapons ban and the prohibition on high-capacity magazines, so there will be both,” Blumenthal responded, adding that he intends to offer an amendment that would ban high-capacity magazines.