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Any Capitol Hill residents who participated in the Elway poll finding 79% of Washington voters supported a universal background check on all firearms sales were likely dumbfounded to learn that the state’s House of Representatives couldn’t find the votes this week to pass the legislation.

“[B]ecause background check requirements apply only to transfers by licensed firearms dealers,” read House Bill 1588, “many firearms are currently sold without a background check, allowing felons and other ineligible persons to gain access to them.” In requiring universal checks, the bill would have applied even to sales between family members, allowed a fee of up to $20 for the check, and made contravention a gross misdemeanor.

If you boiled down the legislative opposition’s concerns, said bill sponsor Jamie Pedersen (D-43rd), who was joined by a remarkable 37 co-sponsors, it was the sense that HB 1588 amounted to a new burden on law-abiding citizens without strong proof of the societal benefit. House colleagues commonly asked what good a new law would do, if criminals wouldn’t be expected to obey it anyway.

Capitol Hill’s representative at the Capitol, Jamie Pedersen

“I thought this was a modest way to balance public safety with gun rights,” Pedersen said. In his mind, most people are law-abiding and understand that extending background checks to cover all sales would result in fewer guns being sold to people who shouldn’t have them. (It doesn’t matter if a criminal wants to buy a gun, so long as an upright citizen refuses to sell them one.) Besides, he pointed out, it’s not just about felons. A universal background check keeps guns out of the hands of people who have been involuntarily committed for psychiatric care or who have had protection orders filed against them.

But, yes, it is difficult to show people the data on this because the NRA has successfully lobbied to strip funding for firearm-related research. As it is, the estimate that 40% of firearm sales happen outside licensed gun dealers is squishy. Pedersen can tell you that in 2011, the FBI reported that 78,000 gun sales were stopped by background checks (pdf).

Still, what about that 79% approval? Didn’t that help legislators decide? Not really, said Pedersen. For one thing, that poll presents a statewide number, not broken out by specific legislative districts. Secondly, key to a hot-button issue, it doesn’t account for intensity of support. What a legislator wants to know, explained Pedersen, is whether this is the single most important issue for their voters. A rare Republican initially supportive of the bill, Maureen Walsh (R-16th), found herself dealing with blowback from an NRA “hit piece.” Over a thousand voters gave her a piece of their mind, and she changed hers.

(The Bellevue-based Second Amendment Foundation offered to do a little horse-trading: They’d back universal background checks if the state gave up its handgun registry, among other concessions.)

In an effort to bring nervous legislators on board, Pedersen amended the bill with a clause, requiring it to be approved by public referendum. The idea was that it would indemnify legislators accused of ignoring the will of the people, but to some lawmakers, it looked like a way to shoot themselves in the foot. “2013 is the wrong year,” they told Pedersen. They were expecting a lower turnout than 2014, and lower turnouts are more easily skewed by fired-up contingents of voters. Was the newly formed Washington Alliance for Gun Responsibility prepared to face off with the NRA and other gun-rights groups?

In the end, the votes weren’t there. But Pedersen is used to working the process. “There’ll be a lot of conversations over the next few weeks,” he predicted, between legislators and advocates, and among advocacy groups. And he now knows which legislators need help determining if their district really does favor such a bill. It’s still not out of the question for a background check initiative to make the 2013 ballot, or to try a two-stage process next year: Attempt to marshal legislative support, with Plan B being a 2014 ballot initiative.