While Hillary Clinton was rallying with House Democrats at a high-profile meeting Wednesday morning in the Capitol Hill basement, one senior lawmaker was missing.

Connecticut Rep. John Larson skipped the rare session with his party’s presidential hopeful for a face-to-face with the House parliamentarian. Larson had an obscure question about House rules: What would happen if he and a bunch of his colleagues took to the House floor to stage a sit-in protest, effectively shutting down the House?


Larson was told that it was an “unprecedented instance that was hard to know what the response would be.” It was assumed the raucous Democratic protest would force Republicans to adjourn the House, which is exactly what happened.

As Democrats on Capitol Hill struggle to push new gun control measures in the face of overwhelming GOP opposition, Larson and Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) — with the blessing of Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and other top Democrats — wanted to do something dramatic after the massacre in Orlando.

And Wednesday’s protest was nothing if not dramatic — an escalation of tactics by a virtually powerless minority that amounted to guerrilla warfare to force action on an issue. Longtime House watchers hadn’t seen anything quite like it in many years, if at all.

If Republicans stuck together, Democrats would never be able to move their favored proposals, including blocking gun purchases by anyone on the federal “no fly” list, and expanded background checks for gun sales.

So Larson and Lewis and a handful of their colleagues decided to copy a GOP tactic from when Republicans were in the minority in 2008: Get dozens of members to go on the floor and refuse to leave. Demand action or say they won’t let the House adjourn in mid-July. Block the House from any business until Republicans give in.

Speaker Paul Ryan and Republican leaders could either yield and allow a vote — extremely unlikely — or House Democrats would bring new attention to the issue. It was the GOP tactic on steroids, this time in the era of widespread social media. And the passion of Democrats on guns far exceeded that of Republicans eight years ago, when the GOP was demanding more offshore oil drilling.

The plan was laid out at a Tuesday night meeting with Larson and about a dozen Democrats. They met in the office of Rep. Katherine Clark of Massachusetts to hash out a plan to force a vote on the matter. The lawmakers decided they were ready to play hardball — even if it meant shutting down their half of Congress for an entire day, or longer.

“Most of the members didn’t even know what was going ahead for us,” Lewis told C-SPAN. “We never said anything or shared anything.”

When Lewis and Larson led their band of roughly two dozen Democrats onto the floor Wednesday to begin their sit-in, they staged the equivalent of the Senate’s filibuster. What began as an intricate behind-the-scenes plot with a handful of members grew to include almost the entire 188-person Democratic Caucus.

Releasing their pent-up anger over the nation’s gun laws after the Orlando massacre that left 49 dead and 53 wounded, they took over the House floor for hours, plopping down and shutting down all legislative business until GOP leadership would allow a vote.

“We said at the beginning of this week that we would use every tool in our toolbox,” Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) said. “We said some of those tools involved hammers. Some of those tools involved screwdrivers. Some are blunt, some not. We’re going to keep using every single tool.”

Hill Democrats had been itching for a political fight on guns since the Orlando shootings. In the Senate, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) last week had staged a successful filibuster that caught national attention and eventually led to a series of floor votes. Those measures failed, but there will be another vote on a proposal by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine).

House Democrats wanted to do something similar and had been brainstorming for days. There had been talk about trying a discharge petition — doing an end run on GOP leaders to force a vote — but they didn’t have the support and it would take too long.

So they needed to come up with something bigger, something more catchy.

On Sunday, Pelosi called Israel, her caucus’ top messager, and asked him to come up with a list of ways they could force the issue in the House before the chamber left for its July 4 recess.

They spoke again later that day with representatives from roughly 100 gun-control advocacy groups to discuss other options, coming up with the “No Bill, No Break” mantra that House Democrats would start chanting on the floor Tuesday when Republicans refused to recognize Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) for a vote.

Israel came up with a list of options that Pelosi floated to the fuller Democratic Caucus on a conference call Monday, including asking for a vote in a motion to recommit.

The Democratic plan was to keep trying anything they could and keep causing a scene in hopes of increasing pressure on Republicans to let members go on record in a roll-call vote.

Separately, a small group of rank-and-file Democrats was plotting on its own. Just before the week’s first series of votes Tuesday evening, as lawmakers were flying back to Washington from their districts, Clark hosted a meeting in her office to brainstorm ways to force a vote.

Rep. Suzanne Bonamici via AP

Larson, whose Connecticut district is near the Sandy Hook elementary school where 20 children were shot to death in 2012, helped drive the conversation. About 12 to 15 people showed, a source present said, including Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.)

“We wanted to make sure the House couldn’t proceed until we got a vote,” said one Democratic source.

Democratic leaders caught wind of the meeting and approved the plan but gave one bit of advice: Go big. If you pursue such an overt demonstration, leaders said, according to one Democratic leader, “seize the opportunity” and make sure it succeeded by tapping a big name to lead the protest.

The group’s choice for leader was an easy one: Civil rights leader John Lewis, who decades ago protested racial inequality during his own sit-ins in the South.

Clark and Larson asked him to take the lead. Lewis accepted, later holding another meeting in his office Tuesday night to finalize their plans.

Some were a bit concerned about the timing. One Democratic aide told Politico he was worried that the sit-in happening on the day that Clinton came to Capitol Hill would look staged and coordinated, when the effort began organically among rank-and-file lawmakers.

But with the House scheduled to adjourn on Friday for recess, it was now or never.

On Wednesday, just before Clinton arrived to meet with Democrats and as Larson went to speak to the parliamentarian, Pelosi stood up at a conference meeting to rally the troops.

“Many of you have said that we cannot have another moment of silence without action to follow. These moments of silence have almost become a moment of denial because it’s a denial of what we need to do,” Pelosi said. “Now, many of you have said, we want to be disruptive, we want to be dilatory, we want to make sure the public knows that there is an opportunity to get this done. This isn’t about politics, it’s not about elections, it’s not about campaigns. It’s much bigger than that.”

John Bresnahan contributed to this report.

