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“I very much regret it,” Feinstein, D-Calif., told reporters of Reid’s decision. “I tried my best.”

Reid said that “using the most optimistic numbers,” there were less than 40 votes for Feinstein’s ban. That is far less than the 60 needed to begin considering legislation.

“I’m not going to try to put something on the floor that won’t succeed. I want something that will succeed. I think the worst of all worlds would be to bring to something to the floor and it dies there,” Reid said.

Feinstein, an author of the 1994 assault weapons ban that expired after a decade, said that Reid told her of the decision on Monday.

There are 53 Democrats in the Senate, plus two independents who usually vote with them.

An assault-type weapon was used in the December massacre at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., that revived gun control as a top issue in Washington. Banning those firearms was among the proposals President Barack Obama made in January in response to those slayings.

The assault weapons ban was the most controversial of the major proposals to restrict guns that have been advanced by Obama and Senate Democrats. Because of that, it had been expected that the assault weapons measure would be left out of the initial package the Senate considers, with Democrats hoping the Senate could therefore amass the strongest possible vote for the overall legislation.

I’m not going to try to put something on the floor that won’t succeed. I want something that will succeed

Having a separate vote on assault weapons might free moderate Democratic senators facing re-election next year in Republican-leaning states to vote against the assault weapons measure, but then support the remaining overall package of gun curbs.