Would the Republicans let anything new pass? I am sad to say I don't keep up with all the political players and their views on the 2nd Amendment but I assume that the majority of Republicans are pro and even some Democrats and the gun haters are usually in the minority.
That is a very, very dangerous assumption.
The caveat of everything I am about to say is that this was in California. However, the warnings are applicable everywhere, especially in metropolitan areas.
I was involved with CA Republican politics from about '92 to '00. The biggest gun grabber during that time was the Republican AG, Dan Lungren. He constantly yammered on and on about getting guns off the streets. There was a police chief, Eugene Byrd, in the town of Isleton, a small rural town outside of Sacramento, who went shall issue on concealed permits. Lungren cracked down hard on him, and his cronies eventually drove him from office. What's Dan Lungren doing nowadays? Representing the 3rd Congressional District in CA. By the way, the CA Republican establishment considered him to be one of the most conservative politicians, so whatever he said was gold. I can name many other so-called conservative Republicans who supported gun control.
Did you know, that just this past gubernatorial election, the Democrat, Jerry Brown, was the candidate most supportive of gun rights? And not by a "lesser of two evils" account, either. Meg Whitman was solidly anti-gun based on her campaign statements and eBay's policies. Brown, meanwhile, as AG, drove a few high ranking anti-gun bureaucrats out of the AG office by making life a living hell for them. A personal friend of mine with inside knowledge said, "Brown was incredibly hostile to that division." He quashed a anti-gun filing that was making its way through the office on Heller, and personally wrote a pro-2nd Amendment friend of the court filing on McDonald. He stated, "[SCOTUS] should extend to the states the concept that government cannot deny citizens the right to possess handguns in their homes, but also provide guidance on the scope of the state's ability to reasonable regulate firearms." As AG, in an interview with an NPR affiliate in the Bay Area, Brown said something to the affect of, "It's not NRA members that are robbing convenience stores." Brown is never vocal on the gun issue, but he is on our side.
The sole reason that these anti-gun Republicans in CA used, and other anti-gun Reps around the country use, is that they are pandering to law enforcement. Doug Ose, another former Congressman said about the Assault Weapons Ban, "I'd support anything to make the jobs of law enforcement easier." California Republicans have always had a problem in that they're all either socialists or neocons. Being tough on crime was one of those things they could own.* The Constitution be damned.
* It was completely stupid. The police unions, especially the CHP, would almost always endorse the Dems because Dems liked to spend money and they liked big government. No matter how much the Republicans kowtowed to law enforcement interests, they'd get stabbed in the back come November. Done ranting.
