After months of contentious debate regarding a controversial gun amendment, the push in Congress to pass a bill that would the District a vote in the House of Representatives has come to a halt.

Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., a fierce proponent of D.C. voting rights, announced Tuesday that efforts to eliminate a gun amendment added by Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., had failed for now and that the bill would not move forward. The amendment would have effectively repealed the District’s current gun control laws and strip D.C. lawmakers of the ability to restrict firearms.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., and Norton said Tuesday that the bill was indefinitely on hold because there were not enough votes to pass the bill without the gun amendment.

“We will never give up on equal rights for our residents,” Norton said in a statement, but said that the amendment posed “unusual public safety dangers.”

Many D.C. vote advocates agree that though D.C. deserves representation, the gun control legislation nullifies the voting rights bill.

“We began this year with a high level of enthusiasm and optimism that the time finally had arrived when the D.C. taxpayers would get a full vote on the floor of the House of Representatives, a step toward full enfranchisement,” D.C. City Council Chairman Vincent Gray said in a statement.  “By the same token, the onerous and dangerous nature of the Ensign amendment, which would remove major provisions of the District’s gun control legislation and most importantly eliminate the authority of the Council to legislate in this area in the future, perhaps makes this delay a necessary step for now.”

But proponents of the voting rights act say they will keep trying.

“The fight is far from over,” Ilir Zherka, executive director of D.C. Vote, said in a statement.