On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee will consider the renewal of an assault weapons ban and restrictions on magazine sizes. This week, the panel passed a measure that would expand the use of background checks to private gun sales, and another to renew a grant program to help schools improve security. The committee also approved a measure last week that would make the already illegal practice of buying a gun for someone else who is legally barred from having one — known as a straw purchase — a felony and to increase penalties for the crime.

The debate in the Judiciary Committee will end Thursday, moving consideration of gun legislation to the Senate floor and perhaps the House, where members have indicated they might consider any legislation that the Senate passes.

But any legislation that comes to the Senate floor could be undermined by riders on appropriations bills like the one being debated on the floor now, which would keep the government running through the end of September. The Senate is trying to pass a short-term measure to prevent the government from shutting down, as members from both parties and chambers go about the business of creating actual budgets. For the last two years, Republicans and Democrats have fought over these short-term spending agreements, over the amount in them and the policy riders that Republicans often attach to them as part of the deal.

These riders are a boon to Senate Republicans, particularly those who are strong advocates of Second Amendment rights, and a bit of an embarrassment to some Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee, who are trying to avoid policy riders and also not handcuff their colleagues who are active in creating new gun legislation.

Even though the gun-rights provisions are long standing, making them permanent is “counterproductive,” said Garen J. Wintemute, the director of the violence prevention research program at the University of California, Davis. “Regular inventories help identify retailers who are not adequately protecting their firearms from loss or theft and, more important, those who are letting firearms go out the back door and declaring them lost or stolen,” he said.