The leading proponent of gun control in the U.S. Senate only could bring condolences to the mother of the three-year-old boy shot to death two weeks ago.

Sen. Chris Murphy met with Solmary Cruz, the mother of the slain toddler, Randell Jones, in a private meeting arranged by the Rev. Henry Brown, an activist who once heckled Murphy as insufficiently engaged on urban violence. Brown is a co-founder of Mothers United Against Violence.

They talked about violence, the ease of a teenager obtaining a gun in America, and the difficulty of convincing a divided Congress to regulate the sale of firearms. It was Friday afternoon, around the same time her son was fatally wounded on April 10, a Saturday that saw two boys killed in Connecticut’s capital city.

Then Murphy and Brown toured the neighborhood, starting at the corner bodega where Randell was shot while sitting in a parked car with his mother, two siblings and a man police assume was the intended target of the daylight driveby attack.

Joining them were some of the women in the collective Brown simply calls “the mothers,” a sorority of the forever grieving. The mother of Randell Jones did not join them. Too soon, Brown said.

“It’s getting worse, not better,” Murphy said.

He was talking about violence, not the prospects of a passing a compromise version of H.R. 8, the gun-control bill recently passed by the House. It would require universal background checks before the sale of any firearm in the United States, even among family members.

“I don’t think it’s a secret that a universal background checks bill like H.R. 8 can’t pass the Senate right now,” Murphy said. “It’s more likely that we can get consensus around background checks on commercial sales.”

He would like commercial sales to reach beyond federally licensed firearms dealer to private sales conducted at gun shows and online, two major loopholes in the current requirement for background checks.

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Murphy said he spent much of the congressional recess in search of Republican votes, a necessity in a chamber where each caucus has 50 members and 60 votes are necessary to evade a filibuster.

“I’ve talked to at least half of the Senate Republican conference, and a surprising number of them are open to a potential compromise,” Murphy said. “The sort of tone I’m hearing from Republican senators is very different than what I heard in five or six years ago.”

The tour Friday began outside La Caribena Grocery on the corner of Nelson and Garden Streets, where Cruz and her three children, ages 3, 4 and 5, sat with a male passenger in a car parked outside La Caribena Grocery Store. Two teens have been charged in the killing: a 19-year-old as the shooter; a juvenile as an accessory.

Murphy said Randell’s siblings were casualties, even if spared being shot.

“I won’t go into details about it,” said Murphy, the father of two boys. “But those kids are dealing with something that’s unthinkable.”

Henry Brown played a memorable role in Murphy’s first days as a U.S. senator in January 2013.

In a scene witnessed by reporters and recounted in a book Murphy published last fall, the Black minister scorned Murphy at a community meeting as a white dilettante disinterested in gun violence until it claimed the lives of 26 educators and children at Sandy Hook.

Eight years have passed since the day Brown schooled Murphy and Sen. Richard Blumenthal at a community center in the city’s North End, a few blocks from La Caribena.

Brown’s complaint in 2013 was that mass shootings generate headlines, but the steady loss of young Black men and children on corners like Nelson and Garden often go unnoticed, even when one is 3-years-old.

“I think now that the senators got it,” Brown said. “I think the president got it. And I think that now is the time for these changes to happen. If we don’t get it done now, we’re not gonna get it done.”

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Lobbying for change is only a part of Mothers United Against Violence, a group known for public vigils and marches. When there is another shooting, another death of someone’s child, the mothers reach out without fanfare.

They came to Deborah Davis on a January day after her 20-year-old son, Phillip, was shot to death by another young man, a friend who told the police they were taking turns dry-firing what they thought was an unloaded gun.

That was 11 years ago. On Friday, Davis walked with Murphy, Brown and Mayor Luke Bronin, occasionally stopping to chat with women sitting on steps, enjoying the afternoon sun. She told one woman, who sat with toddlers, about the mothers.

Davis wore a blue windbreaker with the Mothers United logo, as did the others on the tour. The walk was a gesture.

They walked south on Garden Street, a high-rise headquarters of a Fortune 500 company, The Hartford, visible at the end of the street. Then it was over to Enfield Street towards Magnolia, where 16-year-old Ja’Mari Preston, 16, was shot and killed about two hours after Randell Jones.

Brown and some of the mothers were out that day, responding to Randell’s shooting, when they heard rapid gunfire on Magnolia. “We were right here,” Brown told Murphy.

On Enfield, they passed a shrine, a collection of votive candles and deflated Mylar balloons. It marked the spot where a 34-year-old man was shot to death in what police said was an exchange of gunfire with members of a federal anti-crime task force in January.

Later came the vacant lot, where Davis made them stop. She told Murphy was the spot last month where 30-year-old Alton Veal was shot to death. They didn’t make it all way to Magnolia.

Murphy was recovering from knee surgery, a car arrived and he bid the group goodbye. There was no heckling from Brown.

Brown and the women gathered in a circle, joined by a Hartford police officer, for a prayer before leaving. They prayed for justice, for the children and the men and women in their lives.