Facing yet another gut-wrenching mass school shooting, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and his fellow Senate Democrats signaled Wednesday that they are open to further negotiations with Republicans over potential gun-control legislation -- modest and ill-fated as they may be.
In his first extended remarks on the horror in Uvalde, Texas -- where an 18-year-old gunman murdered 19 children and two adults in an elementary school -- Schumer, D-N.Y., castigated Republicans for their repeated inaction after mass shootings dating back more than a decade, but said Democrats had no choice but to try again.
"I know this is a slim prospect -- very slim, all too slim. We've been burned so many times before. But this is so important," he said on the Senate floor. "If you do the right thing and persist, justice will eventually prevail... . And for that reason alone, we must pursue it."
Schumer's remarks Wednesday indicate that he is, for now, siding with members of his caucus who want to at least try to work with Republicans firmly opposed to existing Democratic gun-control bills in hopes of striking a deal around some kind of narrow legislation that could break decades of congressional stasis on guns.
But if past is prologue, those talks could drag on for weeks or longer and peter out as public attention turns away from Tuesday's shooting in Uvalde and the killing of 10 in a Buffalo supermarket earlier this month.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., gave no immediate indication about whether Republicans would engage on a potential compromise. In his own floor remarks Wednesday, he called the Texas shooting the work of a "deranged young man" and asked for prayers but did not mention any possible legislative action.
"It's literally sickening, sickening to consider the innocent young lives that were stolen by this pointless, senseless brutality," McConnell said, adding: "The investigation is still underway. The authorities will continue to learn exactly what happened and how."
The alternative to bipartisan talks would be to hold quick votes on two House-passed gun bills, neither of which would be expected to survive a GOP filibuster, to demonstrate Republicans' opposition to modest gun-control measures ahead of the midterm elections.
Schumer did not rule out holding those votes eventually. Speaking Wednesday, he acknowledged that some Democrats "want to see this body vote quickly so the American people can know which side each senator is on."
"I'm sympathetic to that, and I believe that accountability votes are important," he said. "But sadly, this isn't a case of the American people not knowing where their senators stand. They know. They know because my Republican colleagues are perfectly clear on this issue -- crystal-clear."
The debate over how to move forward was already underway among Senate Democrats on Tuesday night, just hours after news of the Uvalde shooting coursed through the Capitol. The two senators from Connecticut -- who each led efforts for congressional action after the last mass elementary school shooting took place in their state in Newtown in 2012 -- captured the divide.
Moments after delivering an impassioned floor speech, Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., told reporters that he intended to try to jump-start dormant talks with Republicans and that he was focused on passing a bill, not making a political point.
"I am so willing to bend over backwards to find compromise," he said. "I need a vote that just shows progress to these would-be killers. I want to show this country that we care, and so I'm perfectly willing to let the good prevail over the perfect."
Meanwhile, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said that while there are "threads of hope" for a compromise, "I also think that our colleagues have to be held accountable."
"We need to vote," he said. "Every one of us should be put on record."
Schumer has not signaled which path he prefers, and multiple senators and aides said they expected him to consult widely within his caucus before choosing a direction. On Tuesday night, he started the process of putting two House-passed gun-control bills on the Senate calendar for action -- a move that would give the Senate options in the coming days or weeks.
Both of those bills attracted only limited Republican support in the House and neither has anywhere near the 10 GOP Senate votes necessary for passage under the Senate's filibuster rule.
One, the Bipartisan Background Checks Act, would establish universal background checks for commercial gun sales. The other, the Enhanced Background Checks Act, would extend the period to perform a federal background check on a gun buyer from three to 10 days -- closing the "Charleston loophole" that allowed South Carolina church killer Dylann Roof to purchase a gun in 2015 despite a previous criminal conviction because the background check was not completed in time.
Bipartisan negotiators have explored other potential compromises in the past that could form the kernel for new talks. Murphy negotiated extensively with Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, about a narrowed expansion of background checks that would expand the federal definition of a firearms deals, but those talks petered out in 2021.
A separate negotiation emerged in summer 2019, after mass shootings in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, surrounding "red flag" laws that would allow authorities to seize guns from individuals deemed to represent a threat. A group led by Blumenthal and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., negotiated for weeks in talks that also involved then-President Donald Trump's Justice Department. But the negotiations fell apart that September after House Democrats moved to impeach Trump over an unrelated matter.
Blumenthal said Tuesday that he had not yet spoken to Graham about rekindling the talks. Graham on Tuesday tweeted that he would "welcome a debate in the U.S. Senate about any and all measures that my colleagues believe will have an effect," without mentioning any particular provision.
"Let's debate and vote," he said.
Any talks, however, face fierce head winds among Republicans. On red-flag laws, for instance, gun rights supporters have been intensely wary of broadly defining what constitutes a threat worthy of suspending the constitutional right to bear arms, and they have been insistent that any legislation include robust due process protections to ensure that any such designation can be challenged and potentially overturned.
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who was involved in the 2019 negotiations, said the red-flag proposals he has seen constitute "overreach."
"Virtually every one that I've seen here has been one that sweeps up law-abiding gun owners," he said, adding: "The question is, can we actually get to policy that can make a difference but not deny people their Second Amendment rights and give them due process?"
Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., the No. 2 GOP leader, said Tuesday that Republicans had already started informal discussions on the Senate floor about a possible response, which he said "centers around the issue of mental health."
"It seems like there's consensus in that area, and that would be probably the most likely path forward," he said.
Other Republicans, such as Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Rick Scott of Fla., said they hoped lawmakers would look at legislation to improve school security. Both cited the EAGLES Act, named after the mascot of Parkland, Fla.'s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where 17 were killed in 2018.
The bill has bipartisan support, but its effect is limited: It would expand a Secret Service threat assessment program to focus on school violence.
But the most consistent refrain from Senate Republicans in the immediate aftermath of the Uvalde tragedy was to cite a lack of facts about the latest shooting. Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., a medical doctor, said "the correct remedy depends upon the proper diagnosis."
"My question is, what are the details of the issue?" he added. "The response should be addressing, what have we passed that did or didn't work and then what, and if this is something different, we ought to respond to it. It goes without saying that this sort of tragedy moves action, and so let's see what the facts are."
But several Democrats said it was folly to tailor any single piece of legislation to the circumstances of one particular mass shooting.
"There's no single panacea here," Blumenthal said. "There's no way to match a single massacre with another single proposal. The point is, we know that the combination or one of these actions will save lives."
Blumenthal and other Democrats said they were open to any proposal that would show substantive action to keep guns out of the hands of would-be killers.
As Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., walked on the Senate floor Tuesday night to cast a vote, he told reporters he had been stirred by a protester outside the chamber holding a sign reading, "This Is Your Fault."
"I think the people who are here aren't totally crazy," he said. "And if they can't see that we need to do something and still protect our Second Amendment rights, then we are denying a reality that's happening far too often."
"Let's come to a decision that we can do something to at least try to get our arms around this because it's totally unacceptable," he added. "I would start with background checks and ... [keeping guns] out of the hands of criminals who are court-adjudicated mentally-ill, criminals and terrorists. That'd be a nice place to start."
But other Democrats said they still wanted to put Republicans on the record on a variety of issues related to mass acts of gun violence.
"This tragedy is heartbreaking, and we should actually have votes on banning military-style assault weapons, large magazines and universal background checks," Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., said.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. -- a veteran of the gun-control wars who wrote the federal assault weapons ban of 1994, which expired after 10 years and was not renewed by Congress -- said she was unsure whether it made sense to vote now on a similar ban, which has been firmly opposed by Republicans.
"You know, if I thought we had the votes, I would. I don't know right now. I don't know whether this has moved people or not," she said.
On Wednesday morning, Feinstein proposed raising the age to buy assault rifles from 18 to 21 -- a law that would appear to have prevented the sale of the weapons to the gunmen in Uvalde and in the recent Buffalo mass killing.
"Both these teenage shooters would have been turned away at a bar," she said in a statement. "But they were able to walk into gun stores and legally purchase one of the most deadly weapons available, weapons that have no place on our streets, in our grocery stores or in our schools. This is unconscionable."
But Republicans suggested that allowing 18-year-olds to purchase firearms was not a matter of conscience but of sound policy. Tillis, for instance, raised concerns about creating a disparity in the minimum ages for military service and gun ownership.
"So there's a lot of complexities to that question," he said.