Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., hinted strongly Sunday that she will seek re-election for a fifth term in 2018.

On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” the 84-year-old said she was “ready for a good fight.”

“I’ve got things to fight for,” Feinstein said. “I’m in a position where I can be effective, and hopefully that means something to California.”

When asked directly if she would run, she told the program’s host, Chuck Todd, “You’re going to find out about that very shortly.”

The former San Francisco mayor and oldest U.S. senator has dodged questions recently about whether she will seek a fifth term, leaving the Democratic leadership in limbo in grooming potential candidates to run for the coveted seat.

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Feinstein, who was first elected to the Senate in 1992 and had a pacemaker implanted in January, has raised millions of dollars, and some top Democrats have said they expect her to run for another six-year term.

The electorate, though, has shown signs that it may not be as supportive of Feinstein as in past years.

About half of likely California voters don’t think she should run for re-election, according to a survey released last month by the Public Policy Institute of California.

The poll found 54 percent of likely voters approve of her job performance, but a majority of independents and Republicans don’t think she should seek re-election.

Among her fellow Democrats, 57 percent said they support her running for another term, the survey found.

The party’s leadership has faced a crisis in the wake of President Trump’s election. Top Democrats have struggled to reconcile an increasingly divided party embodied by the contentious primary race between the more progressive candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, independent-Vt., and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a moderate Democrat.

Some progressives contend that Feinstein has not been aggressive enough in opposing the Trump administration.

Feinstein appeared on the Sunday news show one week after a mass shooting in Las Vegas left 58 victims dead and hundreds more wounded.

The longtime advocate for stricter gun laws introduced legislation Wednesday to ban “bump stocks” and other devices that make semiautomatic weapons fire like machine guns.

The Las Vegas shooter, Stephen Paddock, had 12 rifles equipped with “bump stocks” when he unleashed a torrent of gunfire from his 32nd floor suite at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino into the crowd of thousands below attending the Route 91 Harvest country music festival on Oct. 1.

“This is one simple thing that stops the making of a semiautomatic weapon into a machine gun,” Feinstein said Sunday. “This can happen to anyone today in America. We can do one simple thing to change it — to make these additive devices, whatever they are, illegal.”

The National Rifle Association last week signaled it may be open to regulating such devices — a shift in tone from the organization that is typically rigidly opposed to any proposed limits to gun rights.

“The NRA believes that devices designed to allow semiautomatic rifles to function like fully automatic rifles should be subject to additional regulations,” the pro-gun group said in a statement.

The NRA, though, called on the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to “immediately review” whether devices like “bump stocks” comply with federal law.

Feinstein said Sunday that such regulations needed to be codified by Congress so they can’t be easily changed.

Evan Sernoffsky is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @EvanSernoffsky