(CNN) – The organization formed from President Barack Obama's presidential campaign stressed Monday their fight for tighter restrictions on guns didn't end with the issue's defeat in Congress.
Organizing for Action, which actively promoted Obama's gun control agenda in the months leading up to the April vote, will expand their field effort now that some lawmakers are discussing bringing gun control back up for a vote in Washington.
That includes an expanded field effort, with additional organizers in what Carson called "targeted locations" to help promote Obama's agenda. OFA currently has paid staff in nineteen states.
"We really think a very important way to change the conversation in Washington is to demonstrate support for the president's agenda out in the states," OFA's executive director Jon Carson said on a conference call Monday.
The group's efforts in the lead-up to the vote included blasting emails to their massive distribution list, formed from Obama's two successful presidential bids. Supporters were also encouraged to message their senators and congressmen to ask for votes increasing limits on guns.
Community events were organized with gun violence survivors in districts of potentially swayable senators, a joint effort between OFA and Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the group headed and partially funded by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
And online ads were taken out pressing senators to vote for tighter controls on guns, including lawmakers representing battleground states Obama won in November like New Hampshire, Ohio and Iowa.
Yet of those senators targeted in the small online buy, only two voted for expanding background checks on gun sales – Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, a moderate Republican, and Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, a Democrat. Both were considered likely "yes" votes from the beginning stages of the gun control effort.
The April 17 defeat of the bipartisan background checks measure was seen as a major blow to that push, which began after the Newtown elementary shooting in December that left 26 people dead.
After the vote, Obama called out senators who opposed the background checks bill, suggesting they were ignoring the will of the people who elected them.
Noting polls that showed 90% support for such a measure, Obama called it a "pretty shameful day for Washington" and wondered of Congress: "Who are we here to represent?"
And his aligned political group has sought to drive that message home, taking out another round of online ads. Some thank senators for voting in support of the background check bill, but others go after senators who helped defeat the measure.
"Americans have clearly not forgotten the senators who stood with the 90% of Americans who support background checks, and those that didn't," Carson said Monday, adding OFA would "continue to provide support on the ground and on the air to serious efforts to make background checks the law."
That effort has also been undertaken by other pro-gun control groups, including Bloomberg's Mayors Against Illegal Guns. That organization sent the daughter of the slain principal of Sandy Hook Elementary School to a town hall held by Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, who voted against the background checks bill.
The groups' efforts have cast Republicans as overly swayed by gun lobbyists like the National Rifle Association, which opposed the background check measure.
"We'll never be as deep-pocketed or as well-connected as the gun lobby," Carson wrote in an email to supporters earlier Monday. "What we have is better. It's the voices of real Americans who are standing up and saying they've seen enough of gun violence tearing apart communities like Newtown and Tucson and Aurora and Chicago."
OFA said in April it had raised $4.8 million in the first quarter of 2013, from 109,582 donors. The average donation was $44. That was the first report on the financial viability of the group, which officially launched in January.