What will it take??

What will it take for the Senate to pass gun control?

Democrats are vowing action if they capture the Senate, but it's unlikely they can deliver.

By Burgess Everett and Seung Min Kim

After losing big on gun control, yet again, this week, Democrats are shifting full-on to election mode. Their argument: Only a Democratic Senate can make any headway on the issue.

But unless the GOP suddenly renounces the National Rifle Association, the vision of sweeping gun control that Democrats are selling to voters is probably an illusion — no matter who’s running the chamber.

Even if Donald Trump produces a wave election for Democrats, there almost certainly won’t be enough votes to clear the Senate’s 60-vote threshold to pass universal background checks or other measures. Even then, Republicans are strongly favored to keep the House, where any Senate-passed proposal would face even longer odds.

Democrats insist the political tide is turning their way — and the Senate is currently holding high-stakes negotiations on a narrow proposal to bar terrorists from buying guns after the shooting deaths of 49 people in Orlando, Florida. But party leaders don’t have an answer for how anything more far-reaching than that will become law.

“I don’t know what it’s going to take,” said Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) in an interview. “It takes an election, as far I’m concerned.”

The hill might even by steeper than it appears: Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) opposes a Democratic measure authorizing broader background checks, and three of the four GOP supporters of that proposal currently hold seats that Democrats are trying to win. Democrats would need to pick up at least 15 seats to have enough votes to clear a filibuster on party lines — and even then there’s no guarantee that the next class of Democratic senators will all support the party’s efforts to make background checks mandatory or ban military-style assault weapons.

Plus Democrats are defending a number of red states in 2018, which would make vulnerable Democrats less than enthusiastic about antagonizing conservative voters in their states. That tension was laid bare on Monday, when Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman Jon Tester (D-Mont.) voted against a background checks proposal intended to place GOP senators on the wrong side of voters.

Tester, himself up for reelection in 2018, said he voted against his own party’s background checks proposal because “they put some unnecessary stuff in that bill,” including provisions he said would excessively restrict transferring guns among family members.

But despite his own opposition, Tester still pointed to the GOP as the key obstacle in advancing gun measures.

“As far as what we get, it’s got to be bipartisan, of course, because it’s going to be a 60-vote margin,” Tester said of prospects for gun measures in 2017. Noting that only Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) voted with Democrats on background checks, Tester added: “That’s where your problem is.”

Tester was joined by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W-Va.) and Heitkamp, who is working on a compromise gun measure with Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) to bar people on two key federal watch lists from obtaining firearms. But the National Rifle Association came out in opposition on Tuesday, potentially dooming the measure just minutes after it was formally introduced.

The Democratic plan rejected on Monday was similar to a proposal that Manchin pushed three years ago with Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.). But the vote this time was more partisan.

“If they were serious about making progress on this, I think they would have gone to the only bill I know of that has bipartisan support,” Toomey fumed on Tuesday. “That would have been a demonstration of good faith.”

If Democrats defeat Toomey and other vulnerable senators and take the Senate, among the first decisions they’ll face will be whether to charge into a divisive debate over gun control after campaigning on the issue and hammering Republicans for months.

Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the presumptive Democratic leader next year, wouldn’t say Tuesday how the party would prioritize gun control, saying only that “for two decades it’s been an important issue” for the party. But the leader of last week’s high-profile filibuster is pressing Schumer to take a crack at gun laws early on if Democrats capture the Senate.

“If it’s not the first vote it should be at the very top of the list,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). “If Hillary wins and we have a Democratic Senate, there’s an absolute, clear mandate to act on this issue of background checks and other measures to protect against gun violence.”

Prospects are even dimmer for an assault weapons ban, another high priority for Democrats. The ban that passed in 1993 garnered only 56 votes, a time when the 60-vote threshold was rarely employed. (It expired after a decade.) In theory, Democrats could tuck a gun control proposal into unrelated legislation using the arcane procedure of budget reconciliation or move to scuttle the chamber’s supermajority requirement, which would make the Senate much more like the House, where the majority can run roughshod over the minority.

But no one’s talking about pursuing either of those ideas: Even the most reform-hungry senators aren’t interested in getting rid of supermajority rules on legislation.

And parliamentary tactics won’t help clear the hurdle of the House, which even the most optimistic Democrats doubt will flip in November.

Still, Democrats believe the drumbeat of public pressure will become too great for Republicans to resist. They say it’s been evident in the flurry of negotiations that ensued after the Orlando shootings.

A recent CNN survey found 90 percent support for background checks.

“Let’s say they’re in the majority. Let’s say they’re at 54, 56, wherever we were before,” Manchin said, referring to the number of seats Senate Democrats control. “Then I think the chances are pretty darn good, and I think we can get something. Sooner or later, something has to be done.”

Democrats say movement over the past week is instructive. Toomey and Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), who are both in tight reelection races, endorsed the compromise led by moderate Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine).

“Clearly, it’s the beginning of cracks on the vise-like grip of the NRA,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who’s been aggressively pushing for new gun restructions. “It’s the beginning of their grip breaking.”

This week will be a major test of that thesis. As Blumenthal spoke, the NRA was going into overdrive, whipping lawmakers against “any and all gun control” — a reaction to the more modest bipartisan measure being pushed by Collins.