Nine months ago, President Biden signed into law a sweeping bipartisan gun bill, the most significant legislative response to gun violence in decades.

Lives will be saved, he said at the White House.

The law has already prevented some potentially dangerous people from owning guns. But since that signing last summer, the number of mass shootings in the United States has increased. Five killed in a Colorado nightclub. Eleven killed during a dance

studio hall

in California. And last week, three 9-year-olds and three adults were shot dead at a Nashville elementary school

Ten

.

A day after that school shooting, Biden’s tone was clearly less optimistic than he had been

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the signing ceremony.

What the hell are we doing? he asked in a speech Tuesday calling for a ban on so-called assault weapons like those used to kill at Nashville’s Covenant School. There is a moral price to be paid for inactivity.

Biden and others had hailed last year’s bipartisan gun law, passed in the weeks after the shooting of 19 children and two adults at a school in Uvalde, Texas, as a new way forward.

Several months later, the law has seen some success: intensified FBI background checks have blocked gun sales for 119 buyers under the age of 21, prosecutions for unlicensed gun sellers have increased, and new gun trafficking penalties have been imposed in at least 30 cases through the land. Millions of new dollars have flowed into mental health care for children and schools.

But the ongoing mass shootings across the United States highlight the limits of congressional action. Because the law was a political compromise, it did not address many Democratic priorities for gun control, including universal background checks or the ban on assault weapons that Biden has repeatedly called for.

Now, in the aftermath of the Nashville shooting, Congress appears to have returned to a familiar impasse. One of the top Republican negotiators on the gun bill, Texas Senator John Cornyn, has said a new compromise is unlikely. In the House, the new GOP majority favors fewer restrictions on guns, not more.

Asked Thursday about a way forward, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy

(R-van

Bakkersveld

)

said legislation alone cannot solve the problem of gun violence. He said Americans need to think deeply about mental illness and other factors that drive people to act.

Hakeem Jeffries, the leader of the Democrats in the New York House, on the other hand, said Congress must act with great urgency now.

Our classrooms have become killing fields,” he said. Is that acceptable in America?

Democratic

Senator Chris Murphy

(D-Conn.) of Connecticut

, the chief negotiator on the 2022 bill, says he thinks it represents a paradigm shift in how Congress views gun legislation. But, he said, I don’t think that will happen all at once.

This is sickening, but the opportunities for law changes normally come after truly horrific mass shootings, said Murphy, who has been the Senate’s leading advocate for gun control since the 2012 mass shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn. I hate that, I wish it didn’t work that way.

Tensions have been running high on both sides of the Capitol over the past week.

on Wednesday,

Democratic

Representative Jamaal Bowman

(D.N.Y.) of New York

stood outside the House chamber yelling that Republicans are cowards for not doing more gun control, eventually arguing with Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who advocated allowing teachers to carry guns.

More guns lead to more deaths! Bowman yelled at Massie. Children die!

In the Senate,

Republican

ted cruz

(R-Texas) of Texas

attempted to force a vote on Thursday on legislation that would bolster police presence in schools. He almost blamed the Democrats, who blocked the same legislation last year, for the Nashville shooting, calling the 2022 law pointless.

Murphy angrily objected to Cruz’s account, arguing that Cruz was not serious about compromise and that his move was a stunt for the cameras.

Despite the frustrations, lawmakers who negotiated the compromise last year say they see glimmers of hope.

Murphy said implementation of the new law, and some of its early successes, will eventually convince Republicans to get on board with more legislation.

What happened last year was seismic for Republicans, Murphy said.

As far as the bill’s success goes, people aren’t getting excited about the mass shootings that didn’t happen, Murphy said, and that could be a challenge as they talk about it and think about what else could be done. But the dynamics could change quickly, he said.

although

Republicans in the past may have tried to shy away from gun control, even if they supported them, Cornyn and Senator Thom Tillis (RN.C.) have promoted the new law and spoken about it regularly. Late last year, they joined Murphy Senator Joe Manchin

III

(DW.Va.) and FBI Director Christopher Wray while visiting an FBI facility in West Virginia for a briefing on how background checks worked.

I am proud that this common sense legislation is already making a difference, Tillis said in a statement afterwards.

According to recent data obtained by the Associated Press, those flagged in the more extensive background checks and prevented from purchasing a gun included an 18-year-old in Nebraska who had made terrorist threats and was prone to violent outbursts, a 20-year-old drug dealer in Arizona and an 18-year-old in Arizona who were previously charged with unlawful possession of a gun and carrying fentanyl. All tried to buy long guns.

Tillis said he is aware of a separate case in his home state where a person under 21 charged with assault and battery and assaulting a police officer was flagged and prevented from purchasing a gun.

“It’s just one of those bills that will age well,” Tillis said, noting that gun sales denials are a very small fraction of total sales.

Cornyn said the bill seems to be working so far. But he said he doesn’t expect Congress to move forward anytime soon. He said he was strongly against

assault weapons

ban, as Biden proposes.

When Biden and other lawmakers talk about

assault weapons,

they use an imprecise term to describe a group of powerful guns or semis

–

automatic long guns, such as a

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AR-15, which can fire 30 rounds quickly without reloading.

Most Republicans are steadfastly opposed to such a ban, arguing that it would be too complicated, especially as firearm sales and varieties have soared. There are many more types of these powerful weapons today than there were in 1994, when the ban was signed by President Clinton.

Despite the current standstill, John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun control advocacy group, says last year’s law was proof they can break the deadlock.

It was never the finish line, he said.