Tens of thousands of people showed up Saturday for more than 450 March for Our Lives rallies around the country, where speakers called for universal background checks and a ban on the sale of assault weapons or, at the very least, a requirement that Americans to be at least 21 years old before being able to buy an assault rifle.

On Sunday, the student-led group behind the rallies somewhat reluctantly endorsed an emerging Senate gun violence deal that would accomplish none of those things.

In a less-broken society, we would be able to require background checks every single time someone wants to buy a gun, and we would ban assault rifles outright, David Hogg, the groups co-founder and a survivor of the massacre of 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida in 2018. But if even one life is saved or one attempted mass shooting is prevented because of these regulations, we believe that it is worth fighting for.

As a bipartisan group of 20 senators works to finalize what is likely to be the first major piece of gun control legislation in three decades, Democrats are resigning themselves to take a small victory, hoping it could minimize the GOPs fear of political blowback and pave the way for future action toward gun control. Democratic support for the legislation in Congress will be almost unanimous.

We could maybe score more political points against Republicans , but we wouldnt save lives, and thats my priority, said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who helped negotiate the package. If Republicans learn that history and good politics err on the side of saving lives and they want to do more because it will actually get them both, OK.

Still, a small group of Democratic operatives and strategists are worried about the downsides of taking such an incremental deal, fearful it will allow Republicans to claim theyve taken action on a key issue while doing little to actually lower the 45,000-a-year death toll from gun violence or decrease the number of weapons in America.

This is absolutely not worthless. This is a strong package. This is going to save lives, Robin Lloyd, the managing director at the gun control group Giffords, told reporters on a conference call Sunday afternoon as details of the deal emerged. Even if this does not have everything in it that a lot of folks would like to see, it is still really important to do.