D.C. lawmakers enacted scores of laws Tuesday that affect gun control, gay rights and the dates that voters go to the polls.

With only one meeting remaining in the D.C. Council’s two-year term, the council voted to abandon its experiment with a spring primary after just one year and the weakest Election Day turnout in more than three decades.

City lawmakers also finished an unexpected rewrite of city gun rules after a federal judge this past summer struck down a four-decade ban on civilians carrying guns in the nation’s capital. The last details decided Tuesday by the council: Residents can bring guns into restaurants, but they will be prohibited from drinking alcohol while carrying a firearm.

The council also took another step this year for gay rights, banning conversion therapy, which seeks to turn gay teenagers into heterosexuals.

The unanimous council vote put the District in the company of only California and New Jersey in banning the practice.

In advancing the measure to the council, member Yvette M. Alexander (D-Ward 7) chair of the health committee, said the ban would end in the District what has been a nationwide “problem for years.”

The bill bans efforts by licensed mental health providers to seek to change a minor’s sexual orientation, “including efforts to change behaviors, gender identity or expression, or to reduce or eliminate sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward a person of the same sex or gender.” It was opposed by the Family Research Council and some religious organizations.

Sarah Warbelow, legal director for the pro-gay-rights Human Rights Campaign, praised the decision but cast it as an incremental step.

“While the LGBT youth in our nation’s capital will soon be protected once this bill is signed into law,” Warbelow said, “HRC is committed to making sure these kinds of protections are secured throughout the entire nation.”

In June, the Supreme Court declined to hear two cases challenging the California ban. In September, a federal appeals court upheld New Jersey’s ban, which was signed into law by Gov. Chris Christie (R).

In Maryland, a similar measure that was a priority for gay lawmakers died this year when it was withdrawn amid concerns it would not pass the General Assembly.

Other lawmaking efforts Tuesday were no less controversial.

A deeply divided council took an initial step to return the city’s primary date for mayor, council and other local elections to September. The primary for presidential races would be held separately, in June, every four years.

If confirmed in a final vote at the council’s meeting Dec. 16, the new primary will be the first Tuesday of September, and adjacent to Labor Day. Council member Vincent B. Orange (D-At Large) argued that many residents might be traveling and not focused on city politics at that time.

Council member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) objected to holding two primaries and to untethering the presidential primary from those in Maryland and Virginia.

Council member Kenyan R. McDuffie (D-Ward 5), who pushed the measure through committee, cast the change as crucial to restoring D.C. residents’ participation in the electoral process.

On April 1, when Council member Muriel E. Bowser (D-Ward 4) handily defeated incumbent Vincent C. Gray (D), turnout was the worst the city has seen in at least three decades. Only about a quarter of the nearly 370,000 people eligible to cast ballots did so.

While that low point was viewed in part as a reflection of public apathy toward scandal-plagued D.C. politics, the early-year election also played an undisputed role.

Mayoral candidates debated in January and February, often in front of sparse crowds and on snowy nights that more resembled Iowa than the District’s traditional summertime political season of festivals and parades.

Bowser, now the mayor-elect, said a September primary is important to help the government function better in election years. An eight-month lame-duck period, Bowser said, had complicated the transition of power, allowing Gray to make over 80 appointments, even as senior executive branch members fled for new jobs.

Bowser also won approval for a public-private partnership bill that she said would encourage infrastructure investments such as those in Virginia and Maryland in which private companies have paid for construction of toll roads and new rest stops in exchange for the operating revenue from those facilities. With the city rubbing up against its debt cap for borrowing, Bowser said such partnerships could be plentiful.

The council also took final action to overhaul the city’s civil asset forfeiture program with a bill that would give property owners new rights and eventually require that most seizure proceeds go into the city’s general fund rather than to the police department.

The Washington Post reported that as part of a nationwide trend of increased seizures, D.C. police have seized more than $5.5 million since 2001. Small amounts of $141 or less taken from arrestees made up more than half the total.