Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who mourned the loss of 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in his home state, arrives for a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, June 16, 2016, after waging a roughly 15-hour filibuster from Wednesday into early Thursday, asserting as he finally yielded the floor that Republican leaders had committed to hold votes on expanded gun background checks and a ban on gun sales to suspected terrorists. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who mourned the loss of 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in his home state, arrives for a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, June 16, 2016, after waging a roughly 15-hour filibuster from Wednesday into early Thursday, asserting as he finally yielded the floor that Republican leaders had committed to hold votes on expanded gun background checks and a ban on gun sales to suspected terrorists. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) Credit: J. Scott Applewhite

Washington — The slaughter in Florida and an attention-grabbing filibuster in the Senate did little to break the election-year stalemate in Congress over guns on Thursday, with both sides unwilling to budge and Republicans standing firm against any new legislation opposed by the National Rifle Association.

Democrats renewed their call to action after Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., held the floor along with colleagues in a nearly 15-hour filibuster that lasted into the early hours Thursday.

“We can’t just wait. We have to make something happen,” Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., said at an emotional news conference where Democrats joined family members of people killed in recent mass shootings. “These are people bound by brutality, and their numbers are growing.”

But Republicans were coolly dismissive of Democrats’ demands. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., derided Murphy’s filibuster as a “campaign talk-a-thon” that did nothing but delay potential votes.

Noting that a few Democrats had skipped a classified briefing on the Florida nightclub shooting to participate in the filibuster, McConnell chided: “It’s hard to think of a clearer contrast for serious work for solutions on the one hand, and endless partisan campaigning on the other.”

Democrats spoke of the need for new gun legislation.

Republicans cited the threat posed by the Islamic State group, to which Orlando, Fla., gunman Omar Mateen swore allegiance while killing 49 people in a gay nightclub early Sunday.

But the two sides mostly talked past each other, and efforts to forge consensus quickly sputtered out. As a result, the Senate faced the prospect of taking dueling votes beginning Monday on Democratic and GOP bills, all of which looked destined to fail.

It’s the same exercise the Senate has engaged in time and again after mass shootings. Even after the Newtown, Conn., shootings of schoolchildren, the Senate could not pass a bipartisan background checks bill. Moderate Republican Sen. Susan Collins, of Maine, criticized the state of affairs as “Groundhog Day.”

After the shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., last year, the effort was downgraded to trying to pass a bill by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., to keep people on a government terrorism watch list or other suspected terrorists from buying guns, but that too failed.

This time, Feinstein is seeking a revote on her bill. Republicans will offer an alternative by Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, that would allow the government to delay a gun sale to a suspected terrorist for 72 hours, but require prosecutors to go to court to show probable cause to block the sale permanently.

Votes were also expected on dueling background check bills. All were expected to fail.