I lived at that time, the bill was NOT DEAD! It was worse. The NRA managed to prevent real registration with an alternative that was modified so only very small European handguns and army surplus rifles were banned.
If the NRA had not done this we would have a draconian gun registration system in which most firearms would be banned by now.
If you did not live at that time you will never know the hell gun owners had been going through after the death of JFK and Bobby.
The MSM had primed the US mind for gun control and when Bobby got shot they went berzerk with false claims against comic books, TV shows, Movies, the Vietnam war, conservatism, toy guns.
The reason we have a movie rating now is because of “self policing” by the movie industry which basically did nothing but throw off constraints and give us more blood and explicit sex than was ever shown up through 1968.
Your memory doesn’t serve you very well. The bill had trouble getting passed, having failed at least twice before. If Charlton Heston had not pushd as he had the bill would have died.