Three months after Newtown, Obama’s allies are trying to resuscitate gun control. Has Washington waited too long?

President Barack Obama said Newtown changed everything.

But it didn’t change Washington.


Two days after 20 first-graders were gunned down at Sandy Hook Elementary School in what Obama has said was the worst day of his presidency, he took the podium at the memorial service with a simple message: Americans’ approach to guns was wrong, and it had to change. Too many children had died, and he wouldn’t let more follow them.

And yet more than 100 days later, no bill has passed either house of Congress — and members are now off on a two-week spring break.

In interviews, gun control advocates’ frustration with — and mystification over — Washington is palpable. So far, their anger has not turned specifically on Obama — though people in Newtown itself and gun control advocates beyond question whether he could have done more to turn the post-Sandy Hook momentum into tangible results.

( Also on POLITICO: Poll: Support slips for gun control)

But the increasingly sour mood of gun control proponents highlights the stakes in reaping even a slim victory from Congress this spring.

Anything less, in terms of Obama’s legacy, would transform Newtown from a moment of moral clarity to a symbol of how much clout a newly reelected president really has in a divided Washington.

Obama may still get a bill, but not like the one he and his allies envisioned in December. There won’t be new bans on assault weapons or high-capacity ammunition magazines. Universal background checks have moved from an assumed yes to a wish list item for gun control advocates. Even a new gun trafficking law — the smallest and weakest of the issues — is not a sure thing to pass the Senate.

( PHOTOS: Politicians speak out on gun control)

National Urban League President Marc Morial, who has pushed for more attention to city crime, acknowledged that it takes massacres like Newtown to drive gun control momentum.

“Too much of our history has been in reacting to crisis, but sometimes that is what it takes,” he said.

President George W. Bush understood that. Forty-five days after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Congress passed and Bush signed the PATRIOT Act, a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s security apparatus.

But Obama took a different approach — one that’s familiar to those who watched him move methodically (but successfully) on health care and methodically (but unsuccessfully) on climate change.

First, he sent Vice President Joe Biden off to spend a month developing a package of proposals that gun control advocates have been suggesting for years. And then he took three more weeks to talk about them again. And then he moved on to focusing on the sequester, delegating a few senators to craft the legislation and the coalition to pass it while more and more of their gettable colleagues were picked off by intense lobbying and a political mood on the issue that quickly tilted back toward the status quo.

( CARTOONS: Matt Wuerker on gun control)

Would things have been different if Obama had moved more quickly?

“Yes, absolutely,” said Newtown First Selectman Patricia Llodra, the town’s equivalent of a mayor. “I think it would have been much more difficult to vote against change when we were still in that immediate, that first ring of response.”

Washington insiders say that’s just not how it works.

Asked whether Obama and Biden could have done more to push through a bill through personal lobbying or anything else, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) said no.

“They’re not in the Senate,” Leahy said. “The Senate moved it, I moved it, and I moved it quickly.”

“This was faster than just about any other piece of major legislation, with or without Newtown.” Leahy added. “I don’t know what else we could have done.”

But the bill has only made it out of Leahy’s committee. There won’t be a floor vote until April, at least.

When the shooting happened in December, Obama had just won a convincing reelection. There was outrage. There was a lame-duck Congress. The National Rifle Association was cowed into silence. Even Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), a red-state Democrat who won his seat in part thanks to a commercial in which he shot a bullet through a copy of a bill he didn’t like, said he knew the time had come for new control laws and began working with the president and his staff.

Now Manchin, taking heat at home for helping lead universal background check talks in the Senate, says the White House doesn’t really understand guns.

“The White House is not what you consider a gun culture,” he said. “It’s just the way they were raised, so it’s kind of hard for them to speak with the credibility when they don’t have the culture, guns and understanding.”

Obama’s State of the Union call for a vote acknowledged what everyone involved in gun control says: Enthusiasm is far greater among gun control opponents than it is among advocates — except during the immediate aftermath of a massacre.

And it’s dropped since: A CBS News poll released Tuesday found 47 percent of people favor stricter gun control measures, down from 57 percent in December.

Other states moved while Washington didn’t. In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo forced a vote on new state gun laws while the memory of Newtown was still fresh — though in the time since, several GOP lawmakers have expressed regrets and the NRA has sued to overturn the laws. In Colorado, Gov. John Hickenlooper spent months lobbying state lawmakers to get his own assault weapons ban and background check requirements.

Now, more than three months after Newtown, Obama’s campaign arm and his allies are trying to resuscitate the energy for gun control in a push that is as much about 2014 as it is next month’s votes. Organizing for Action held a “day of action” last week and plans another on Thursday. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is spending $12 million and has 50 field organizers in key states holding events during the recess. Obama will make additional trips for gun control events, the White House said this week.

But White House press secretary Jay Carney said Tuesday that the issue hasn’t been the main focus.

“The president has been engaging with lawmakers of both parties on these issues,” Carney said. “When he has been having conversations with Democrats and Republicans, much of the attention has focused on fiscal and budget issues in the reporting, and much of the conversation has been devoted to those topics. But they have also included conversations about comprehensive immigration reform and moving forward on gun violence measures.”

Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy said that after the next mass shooting incident, members of Congress will be forced to explain why they did not act.

“People in the Congress of the United States don’t want to do this,” Malloy said. “And I think they’ll get some things done on trafficking, school safety perhaps, some of the background checks loopholes — but not all of them. Each time that that happens, we’ll continue to have this debate.”

Mark Glaze, director of Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns, said his group is working to translate what it believes is widespread support for background checks into movement in Congress.

“Might shock have produced a few more ‘yes’ votes? Maybe,” Glaze said. “Now you have three months of very consistent polling showing this is a 90/10 issue and 33 more Americans being murdered by guns every day. And now you’re going to have a recess period where hundreds of events across the country are going to bring this into relief for members across the country.”

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), whose assault weapons ban was removed from the core gun control bill last week to boost the chances of getting background checks passed, said she has “no idea” if her bill would have done better months ago. “It is what it is, we’re doing the best we can and that’s that,” she said.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who sits on the Judiciary Committee, said moving any faster than the Senate did would have brought a backlash.

“One could argue that they moved too slowly,” Whitehouse said. “But if they moved more rapidly, they would have not laid the groundwork to try to push the political wall, give people time to do their work and raised the argument that it’s being jammed down people’s throats, regular order and all that stuff.”

The fate of Obama’s gun control rests on the slim hope that third-party groups can persuade wary lawmakers to support background checks during the two-week congressional recess. Bloomberg is spending $12 million to push background checks, though he conceded on “Meet the Press” that his push is as much about the 2014 midterm elections as it is winning a background checks vote in April.

Rep. Mike Thompson (D-Calif.), leader of the House Democrats’ gun control task force, said passing background checks will require mobilizing existing, but often apathetic, support.

“What we need is more grass-roots efforts by the people that read and listen to news reports, people who want to make sure their neighborhoods are safe,” Thompson said. “There’s great support for passing background checks; we just need to ramp up the enthusiasm for people to go one step forward.”

And Bloomberg will continue to use his billions to push gun control candidates in 2014.

“Thirty-three Americans are going to continue to be murdered with guns each day and every day until Congress acts, and they are going to be hearing about it much more than they were six months ago,” Glaze said. “Reality No. 2 is that there will be another mass shooting, and when there is, people who refuse to do the easy things are going to have a lot of explaining to do.”

Richard Feldman, the former NRA lobbyist who now advocates expanded background checks, said Obama’s mistake was seeking gun control reforms that are too broad. Time was wasted, Feldman said, with the debate over assault weapons and magazine size, that could have been spent pushing for an immediate vote.

“If you’re all over the board, you’re as strong as your weakest link. Drop your weakest link. Put your best foot forward. I’d always rather go back to Congress as a winner and ask for more later,” he said. “Anyone in Washington that doesn’t know how to play the game puts themselves at a disadvantage for winning the game. The NRA knows how to win the game for their side. They’ve proved it on the defense or the offense.”

John Bresnahan, Ginger Gibson and Manu Raju contributed to this report.

Correction: A previous version of this story misstated Richard Feldman’s position on background checks.

CORRECTION: Corrected by: Nick Gass @ 03/29/2013 08:05 PM Correction: A previous version of this story misstated Richard Feldman’s position on background checks.