Last week, a San Bernardino couple armed with two .223-caliber assault rifles and two 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistols killed 14 people. And the very next day, the Senate voted against a measure that would have barred gun sales to people on federal terror watchlists. Another gun-control measure to expand background checks at gun shows and for online purchases also failed that same afternoon.

It was political theater at its finest, as the votes came as part of GOP legislation to repeal Obamacare and gut Planned Parenthood funding. So with gun control clearly off-limits, lawmakers are directing their attention to social media as a method to combat domestic terrorism.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday will debate legislation (PDF) called the "Combat Terrorist Use of Social Media Act." Among other things, the measure requires a White House "policy that enhances the exchange of information and dialogue between the Federal Government and social media companies as it relates to the use of social media platforms by terrorists." What's more, the bill demands "a comprehensive strategy to counter terrorists' and terrorist organizations' use of social media."

The upcoming committee hearing is just part of the continuing debate about Silicon Valley's role in fighting terrorism—such as building encryption backdoors into their products or reporting suspected terrorist activity on their networks. The Obama administration has been privately lobbying tech companies like Apple to grant the authorities backdoor access into iPhones, for example, that are encrypted by default. And in the wake of the San Bernardino shooting, now there's a possibility that a Senate plan requiring e-mail providers, social media sites, and other Internet companies to report online terrorist activity will be revived.

"I will urge high-tech and law enforcement leaders to make it harder for terrorists to use technology to escape from justice," President Barack Obama said Sunday in a televised Oval Office speech. Ed Royce, the House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman, said lawmakers "were committed to providing the support needed" for Obama to come up with a plan to combat terrorists' social media strategies.

Meanwhile on Sunday, Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton told ABC's This Week that Silicon Valley must play a role in stopping terrorists from recruiting or celebrating violence online.

"We're going to need help from Facebook and from YouTube and from Twitter," Clinton said. She added that the tech sector is "going to have to help us take down these announcements and these appeals."

The tech sector already appears to be doing that. Twitter, for example, is removing thousands of ISIS-releated accounts. The Brookings Institute estimated that in March there were some 70,000 pro-ISIS accounts on Twitter.

Meanwhile, the FBI warned in March about American teens being susceptible to ISIS' online recruitment tactics. Federal authorities routinely announce the arrests of Americans influenced by ISIS' online methods. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter has said that ISIS "is a social-media-fueled terrorism group in a way we haven't seen yet."