Democrats are eager.

For the first time in ages, they feel like they have a chance to push through some gun control and they’re not going to wait around to do it. In fact, they have plans to vote next week.

The U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee will take up legislation next week that would require universal background checks for gun buyers, the panel’s Democratic chairman said on Thursday. The panel will mark up the bill, known as the Bipartisan Background Checks Act, on Feb. 13 and send it to the House floor for a vote, committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler told a news conference. The legislation has 230 House co-sponsors, including five Republicans. “It’s finally time for action in Congress,” Nadler said. “This bill will close the loopholes that have allowed felons, domestic violence abusers and other prohibited persons to purchase guns through private sales.” The bill would require background checks for all firearm sales and most firearm transfers. The legislation would likely pass the Democratic-controlled House. But there are no signs that it would succeed in the Republican-led Senate.

That’s because the Senate knows a few things that the House doesn’t.

For one, it knows that criminals buy their guns on the black market, not through otherwise legal transfers. As such, a universal background check bill won’t change anything about criminal behavior.

For another, they know that a universal background check system is unenforceable unless you know who has what to begin with. As it stands, even if this bill somehow passed, there’s no way to stop Joe from selling a gun to Bob without a background check. Further, it would be impossible for anyone to tell when Joe sold it to Bob, meaning they wouldn’t know if it were before the effective date of such a law or after.

In other words, the entire bill is a freaking waste of time.

Then again, it’s not like any other gun control measure has managed to keep criminals from getting guns, now have they? Not one bit.

Making matters worse is that Democrats know damn good and well these bills won’t get passed in the Senate. They know it, and they’re doing this anyway. Why? Simple. They’re grandstanding. They’re making a big show of introducing bills that they know won’t pass so they don’t have to live with the ramifications of their passage.

Honestly, it’s no different than when Republicans kept passing bills to repeal Obamacare when they held the House and Democrats held the Senate. They knew it wouldn’t go anywhere, but they did it anyway. Then, when they could pass the laws and get them signed into law, what happened? Not a whole lot.

This is pretty much the same thing. Democrats will pass these bills to signal to their base that they’re fighting, but they know nothing will happen.

The difference is, if they get control of the Senate and the White House, I believe they’d pass these same bills and turn them into law. I guess that means we all need to work to make sure anti-gun politicians don’t get in office, don’t we?