Less than a year ago, Sarah Brady declared, "You are the future now." to the tens of thousands at the Million Mom March. "We must either change the minds of lawmakers on these issues or, for God's sake, this November let's change the lawmakers."

But the laws didn't change, and neither did many of the lawmakers. Instead, a strongly anti-gun control governor was elected president. The euphoria of last year's march is a distant memory (one of its offshoots, the Million Mom organization, laid off 30 of its 35 employees on Friday) and the gun control movement, despite far-ranging efforts to match the National Rifle Association in raw political power, seems to have fallen farther behind.

"I don't think views have changed in the Democratic Party on this issue," said Laura Nichols, spokeswoman for Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, the minority leader. "But the political reality has changed dramatically."

What happened? Obviously, the election of President Bush, a long-time ally of the N.R.A., put a towering obstacle to gun control legislation in the White House. As governor of Texas, he signed laws making it legal to carry concealed weapons and difficult for cities to sue gun manufacturers.

But many centrist and conservative Democrats have also concluded that gun control has become their party's albatross, costing it crucial votes among white, male, rural voters in key states across the South and Midwest. And their concerns have touched off a roiling debate within the party over whether to play down or even discard the issue.

"Gun control," lamented Steve Cobble, director of Campaign for a Progressive Future, a liberal political action committee, "has become the shorthand for why Democrats don't do well."

Even President Clinton, a staunch advocate of gun control, offered what for gun control advocates was surely a dispiriting post-election assessment of the rifle association's strength. "They probably had more to do than anyone else in the fact we didn't win the House this time, and they hurt Al Gore," he said.

Accepted wisdom in Washington holds that opponents of gun control are the most motivated single-issue voting bloc in the country. And the 4 million member rifle association remains years ahead of its rivals in the techniques of mobilizing those voters. "Until we're as organized as the N.R.A., we're not going to get anything done," said Representative Carolyn McCarthy, a New York Democrat who is a leading gun control proponent.

It is far from clear that the movement is making strides toward building the kind of national network of lobbyists, political operatives and organizers that the rifle association has in every state. The Million Mom March, which turned into a gun-control organization based in San Francisco, tried to focus on state legislatures, opening 230 chapters in 46 states. But it grew too fast to pay for all those efforts.