The last record-setting shooting spree on U.S. soil — at a nightclub in Orlando, Florida, last year — prompted Democrats to occupy the House floor for a full day in protest of the GOP’s refusal to take up new gun control laws.

This time, the minority party is employing tamer tactics, tamping down talks of another sit-in and demanding primarily that Republicans drop a gun silencer bill they’ve been pushing.


The difference in approach speaks to the tricky, shifting politics of guns for Democrats.

It’s easy for them to lambaste Republicans for failing to take action after mass shootings. But elevating the issue heading into a midterm election next year — something Democrats said this week they have no plans to do — could repel the very voters they need to woo to regain control of Congress. Not to mention make their vulnerable red-state Democrats prime for Republican attacks.

There’s also a growing sense of futility in the debate. Gun control was a lost cause even under divided government, let alone when Republicans control both chambers of Congress and the White House.

So Democrats are setting their sights lower.

“I am calling on the president to come out against the absurd law about silencers. Threaten to veto it if he must and put an end to that bill,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said.

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That’s not to say Democrats haven’t pushed for other things since the attack in Las Vegas, which killed at least 58 people and injured hundreds more. They’ve called for a vote on a bipartisan bill to expand background checks and requested the creation of a select committee to study gun violence. They just don’t expect the GOP-controlled Congress and White House to respond.

Several Democrats said they recognize that without Republican buy-in, beating the gun control drum through next year's election is likely to achieve little.

“It doesn’t seem to make a great difference at the ballot box, and that’s frustrating,” House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Tuesday.

House Democrats will gather on the Capitol steps Wednesday morning to honor victims of the Las Vegas shooting and criticize GOP inaction. They will be led by Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, one of the architects of last year’s sit-in, and former Rep. Gabby Giffords, who was nearly killed in a mass shooting in 2011.

But their response is noticeably less aggressive than last year's.

The daylong protest then led to ethics investigations into whether Democrats acted improperly by using the House floor as a fundraising platform. House Republicans changed the chamber’s rules to prevent similar actions. The spectacle made headlines around the world.

But faced with this week’s tragedy in Las Vegas, the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, Democrats say they have no plans for a major act of civil disobedience.

“I think at this point, that’s probably not the best course of action for Democrats to take,” Rep. Linda Sánchez of California, vice chair of the House Democratic Caucus, told reporters Tuesday.

In fact, she noted, the idea didn’t even come up during a Democratic Caucus meeting Tuesday when lawmakers discussed various responses to the shooting.

Leaders of last year’s protest have met this week to discuss their options and could still decide to wage a sit-in, but Democratic sources say it’s highly unlikely.

Also improbable is Democrats making gun control a central issue in the midterms.

When Democrats rolled out their 2018 agenda in July, dubbed “A Better Deal,” it purposefully avoided divisive social issues like gun control.

“First and foremost, it’s an economic agenda,” Sanchez said. “While for some members gun violence will be a platform that they will talk a lot about, we want to emphasize the fact that Democrats have and always will continue to stand with working families.”

In the Senate, Schumer’s prodding of President Donald Trump to bury the GOP silencer bill offers Democrats a way to address the Las Vegas attack that speaks to the chamber’s handful of vulnerable incumbents facing tough reelections in deep-red states.

One of them, Sen. Jon Tester has gotten high marks from the National Rifle Association on annual voting scorecards. The Montana Democrat agreed Tuesday that “we’ve got to just hold off” on taking up legislation to loosen limits on silencers until the Las Vegas shooting is fully investigated.

Another vulnerable red-state Democrat, West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, partnered with Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) in 2013 on the last major bipartisan gun bill to have a floor vote in the upper chamber. That background check legislation fell five votes short of the 60 needed for passage.

While Toomey told reporters Tuesday he still supports the measure, Manchin warned that no progress would be possible without White House support.

“It’s really going to take President Trump, who looks at something from a law-abiding gun owner’s standpoint, that makes common sense and gun sense, and puts his stamp of approval on it,” Manchin said.

Manchin added that he would talk with Toomey about the bill and wouldn't rule out pursuing it “if it gets enough cosponsors” from the GOP. But the duo’s bill would likely face an even steeper climb this year.

Despite the party's trimming of its sails on guns, some Democrats say it’s time to seize the issue, even at the risk of alienating moderate voters next year.

View Sens. Feinstein and Blumenthal on gun control measures Sens. Feinstein and Blumenthal discuss gun control measures to stop conversions of semi-automatic weapons to weapons that fire at even faster rates.

Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, who led three fellow Democrats Tuesday in a public call for action on guns, is planning to propose a new background checks bill in coming days.

And Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said Tuesday that she is looking at legislative options to address the easy availability of so-called bump fire stocks, which law enforcement officials say the Las Vegas shooter used on at least one of his weapons to boost its rate of firing.

"How many moments of silence are we going to have?" said Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.). “When are we going to have a moment of outrage?”

