Definition: In this task, you are given a text of many news articles seperated by special token "|||||". Your task is to summarize them.
Input: President Barack Obama finds out this week whether he scratches out a narrow victory on gun control — or ends up with nothing at all. 
  
 Four months after the mass shooting at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school reignited the national debate over gun control, the issue is finally headed to the Senate floor. And the prospects still look bleak for those hoping for sweeping reform. 
  
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 reset Democrats' next move on guns? Obama: Gun control filibuster 'not right' 
  
 The unlikely key to the answer might be a conservative GOP senator from Pennsylvania, Pat Toomey. The former head of the Club for Growth has emerged as a last-minute possible partner on a deal. But his stamp of approval is far from certain. If a deal emerges, Republicans could delay action on it for a week. 
  
 (Also on POLITICO: Hill holds Obama's legacy in its hands) 
  
 Senate action is Obama’s best chance for a deal — but even there, Democrats haven’t settled on which bill to advance. The White House and most Democrats are behind a proposal that requires background checks for all gun sales, although even that is far less than what gun control advocates had hoped. Obama, though, won’t get anything better in the House, and he might not get that much. 
  
 After the Newtown tragedy, Obama pledged to use the full power of his office to prevent another such rampage. He’ll be in Hartford on Monday with victims of the shooting to continue his drive for congressional action on guns. 
  
 Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is set to huddle Monday with other Democratic leaders to hash out a floor strategy. Reid will have to decide early in the week whether a bipartisan compromise on background checks is possible or whether a promised GOP filibuster will prevent the Senate from taking broad action. 
  
 Proposed bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines are all but guaranteed to go down to lopsided defeats. The battle is now over how tough to make a background checks bill for gun sales — which polls show the public broadly supports. Conservatives have balked at record-keeping requirements when background checks are conducted, and Democrats have had a difficult time finding a GOP ally to sign on to a deal including them. 
  
 (PHOTOS: Will these guns be banned again?) 
  
 Democratic leaders are considering advancing one of three background checks bills: a Democrat-only bill by New York Sen. Chuck Schumer — the “gold standard,” as one gun control advocate put it — goes forward to almost certain defeat; an alternative proposal by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) without Democratic backing that calls for universal checks but includes wide exemptions for record-keeping added after pressure from gun rights groups; and a bill by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), which calls for expanding background checks and records requirements for commercial sales but not private ones. 
  
 Reid and top Democrats will decide which version to put forward, and the outlook there is far from certain. 
  
 (PHOTOS: Politicians speak out on gun control) 
  
 Up until now, Democrats have been unable to line up a conservative Republican to back a broad background checks bill. Manchin last week began negotiating with Toomey — a longtime ally of the powerful National Rifle Association — but as of now, no deal has been reached. 
  
 Manchin has until Tuesday to reach a compromise with Toomey for his expanded but not universal background checks bill. Since those talks began in earnest last Thursday, gun control and law enforcement groups have expressed their dismay over the possibility of ceding the universal checks that they — along with Obama and Vice President Joe Biden — have called for since Newtown. 
  
 Obama, Biden and Schumer have all been in regular contact with Coburn, but their talks haven’t yielded a breakthrough. ||||| Prospects for a bipartisan deal to expand federal background checks for gun purchases are improving with the emergence of fresh Republican support, according to top Senate aides. 
  
 The possibility that after weeks of stalled negotiations senators might be on the cusp of a breakthrough comes as President Obama and his top surrogates will begin on Monday their most aggressive push yet to rally Americans around his gun-control agenda. 
  
 Even though polls show that a universal background-check system is supported by nine in 10 Americans, the president has been unable to translate popular support for the measures into legislative momentum on Capitol Hill. 
  
 But in a move that could draw other Republicans as well as Democrats from conservative states who have not yet backed Obama’s agenda, Sen. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.), a key Democratic broker, has spent the past few days crafting the framework of a possible deal with Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.). 
  
 Manchin and Toomey are developing a measure to require background checks for all gun purchases except sales between close family members and some hunters, which addresses concerns of some conservatives, according to the aides, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly about the talks. 
  
 Spokesmen for Manchin and Toomey said only that the senators are talking to many of their colleagues about gun legislation and could not confirm details of their discussions. 
  
 Toomey is usually a reliable conservative vote for Senate Republicans, but he faces reelection in a Democratic-leaning state in 2016. A new player in the months-long gun talks, he is one of several GOP senators who have said that they would be receptive to supporting an expanded background-check program if a bipartisan deal were to emerge. As a former House lawmaker, Toomey remains close to House Republicans who represent the suburbs of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, some of whom have said that they are open to striking bipartisan compromises on gun legislation in part because support for new gun laws is strong in those areas of the state. 
  
 Manchin, a moderate Democrat with an “A” rating from the National Rifle Association, has been eager to strike a deal on gun-control legislation since the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in December that left 20 children and six educators dead in Newtown, Conn. He has spent months negotiating with Sens. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) over details, but talks have stalled in recent weeks amid Coburn’s opposition to Schumer’s insistence on requiring gun owners to keep records of private gun sales. Despite the impasse, Schumer and Coburn have “kept the lines of communications open” in case a deal can be struck, one aide said. 
  
 With Coburn’s support waning and Kirk’s moderate blend of politics not seen as enough to bring along other Republican senators, Manchin has spent much of the two-week congressional recess seeking out other GOP supporters. Talks between Manchin and Toomey began in earnest Wednesday, and the two have swapped proposed drafts, aides said. Any formal announcement of a deal won’t come until Tuesday or Wednesday, when the men return to Washington and sort out remaining details in person, aides said. 
  
 If Manchin succeeds in striking a deal, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) plans to move quickly to include that language in the bill, according to top aides. Those aides caution that Republicans could force the process to extend into next week by exercising various procedural rules. Reid’s current bill includes several of the leading Democratic proposals to curb gun violence, including a plan to expand background checks to all gun purchases, make gun trafficking a federal crime for the first time and bolster federal financing of school security programs. 
  
 Schumer said Sunday that Democrats are open to changing the bill’s language on background checks if Manchin can strike a deal with Republicans. 
  
 “Please let us go to the floor,” Schumer said Sunday on CBS News’s “Face the Nation.” “If we go to the floor, I’m still hopeful that what I call the sweet spot — background checks — can succeed. We’re working hard there.” 
  
 Confidence at the top 
  
 At the White House, top officials remain confident of brokering a deal on universal background checks, which is the most politically palatable of Obama’s gun-control proposals. The negotiations largely are being run out of Vice President Biden’s office, with his chief of staff, Bruce Reed, playing a leading role. Administration officials privately concede that bans on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines are unlikely to pass the Senate when Reid holds up-or-down votes on the proposals as amendments to the main gun bill. 
  
 In hopes of increasing public support for passage of a gun bill, Obama on Monday will fly to Connecticut — where emotions are still raw more than 100 days after the massacre — to deliver a speech on gun violence at the University of Hartford. A White House official said Obama would “speak, as he did at the State of the Union, of the obligations we have to children lost in Newtown and other victims of gun violence to act on these proposals.” 
  
 On Tuesday, Biden will hold a gun-control event at the White House with law enforcement leaders, while first lady Michelle Obama will return Wednesday to her home town of Chicago to speak about gun violence from the perspective of a mother.Over the past couple of years, Chicago has experienced a surge in gun violence. 
  
 GOP filibuster threat 
  
 But Republicans also are mounting a campaign to stop new gun legislation. At least 13 Senate Republicans, led by Rand Paul (Ky.), Mike Lee (Utah), Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Marco Rubio (Fla.), are threatening to block any new gun legislation, with aides expecting more GOP senators to sign on to the filibuster threat when they return to Washington this week. 
  
 “The Second Amendment to the Constitution protects citizens’ right to self-defense,” the senators wrote in a letter they plan to send to Reid on Monday. “It speaks to history’s lesson that government cannot be in all places at all times, and history’s warning about the oppression of a government that tries.” 
  
 Dan Pfeiffer, a senior Obama adviser, warned Sunday that any filibuster would go against an overwhelming majority of the country. 
  
 “What the president wants to sign is a strong, bipartisan bill with enforceable background checks,” Pfeiffer said on “Fox News Sunday.” “That has 90 percent support. It can get done.” 
  
 Pfeiffer recalled Obama’s State of the Union address in February, in which the emotional high point was his call for a vote on gun-control measures. With families of Newtown victims, as well as former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), who was shot in her Tucson district, in attendance, Republican and Democratic lawmakers stood in applause. 
  
 “Now that the cameras are off and the families aren’t there, they are engaging in legislative tactics to make this harder,” Pfeiffer said of Senate Republicans. “There’s no reason we have to do that. And, as the president said, politics is the only reason this stuff won’t get done.” 
  
 Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) also called on conservatives not to filibuster gun-control measures on the Senate floor because Reid has said he is open to permitting votes on GOP amendments. 
  
 Appearing on “Face the Nation,” McCain wouldn’t immediately commit to supporting background checks on gun purchases at firearms shows but said he would look at the specifics in a final proposal. “It really depends on how they are carried out, how long, what the depth of it is. This is another reason why we need to go to the floor,” he said. 
  
 Former Republican congressman Asa Hutchinson, who led an NRA-commissioned study that endorsed placing armed guards in schools to curb gun violence, also appeared open to the idea of expanding background checks in commercial transactions while exempting private sales between friends and family members. 
  
 “If you go to a gun show and you’re buying a firearm from a licensed dealer and have a background check, but you also go out to somebody’s vehicle and you get a firearm there, and you purchase it and you don’t have a check, there is some inconsistency there. And certainly, from my personal standpoint, that’s a fair debate,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.” 
  
 Sean Sullivan contributed to this report. 
  
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Output:
It's a big week for gun control supporters, as the issue heads to the Senate floor this week. Democrat Joe Manchin spent the congressional recess looking to forge ahead on background checks with GOP support, and he and Republican Pat Toomey have spent the past few days hashing out a bipartisan deal, the Washington Post reports. The proposed measure is expected to require background checks for almost all gun buyers, with the only exceptions being sales between close family members and some sales to hunters—thus addressing the key Republican concerns over background checks. The move comes after weeks of negotiations between Manchin and other senators stalled. What's in store this week? President Obama and his team are starting an aggressive pro-gun-control push today with a speech by the president in Connecticut; Joe Biden and Michelle Obama also have events planned this week, and any deal Manchin and Toomey come up with is expected to be announced tomorrow or Wednesday. Will there be a decision this week? Harry Reid will likely be quick to include that deal in the bill, which already includes plans to expand background checks, increase federal funding for school security, and make gun trafficking a federal crime. But Republicans could use procedural rules to delay the process—and thus any decision—into next week (at least 13 are already planning a filibuster). What about other gun control changes? Other potential amendments to the main bill, like bans on assault weapons or high-capacity magazines, are considered unlikely to pass, but expanded background checks enjoy wide public support. Just how many bills are there? At least three different bills address background checks, and Democrats must decide which one to advance, Politico reports: Manchin's, which does not require expanded background checks for private sales; Tom Coburn's, which calls for universal background checks with quite a few exemptions; and Chuck Schumer's, the most expansive bill, which is only backed by Democrats and would likely be defeated. Click for Gabrielle Giffords' latest call for universal background checks.