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The House on Thursday passed a pair of bills largely along partisan lines to strengthen background checks on firearm purchases, sending them to the Senate where the legislation faces longer odds.

The first bill, approved 227 to 203, would expand federal background check requirements to private or unlicensed firearm sellers, closing what is often called the gun-show loophole.

The second bill, approved 219 to 210, would close the “Charleston loophole,” which allows a person to purchase a firearm after three business days if a background check hasn’t been completed. The gunman who killed nine churchgoers in Charleston, S.C., in 2015 was able to buy a gun this way even though a background check should have prohibited him from doing so based on his criminal history.

The House passed similar bills two years ago, but the Republican-led Senate did not take action.

Ahead of the vote, Democrats from both chambers urged their Republican colleagues to find the political courage to embrace the bills, which face longer odds in the now-evenly divided Senate, where 60 votes are required to advance most legislation.

“There’s nobody in Congress whose political survival is more important than the survival of our children,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said at a Thursday morning news conference. “We are not giving up until the job is done.”

Few Republicans have supported Democratic efforts to pass stricter gun-control laws, even though the issue of background checks has overwhelming public support. After the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., that killed 26 people, including 20 children between the ages of 6 and 7, the issue of background checks found some bipartisan support but not enough to pass laws to make it harder for criminals to buy guns.

Ahead of Thursday’s votes, House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) urged his GOP colleagues to vote against both bills, arguing there are already protections in federal law against transferring firearms “to prohibited individuals” and provisions in the legislation would create “arbitrary delays on background checks that will infringe upon millions of Americans’ Second Amendment right to defend themselves and their families.”

Companion bills have been introduced in the Senate but have no Republican sponsors. While it’s possible some GOP senators would cross over to support enhancing background check bills — most likely Sens. Patrick J. Toomey (Pa.) and Susan Collins (Maine), both of whom voted with Democrats when similar legislation came up in 2013 after Sandy Hook — it will be an uphill effort to get the 60 votes needed to advance them.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a leader of the effort in the Senate, cited the Charleston massacre in his remarks at the news conference.

Nine people in Charleston would be alive today if the killer didn’t take advantage of “a glaring gap” in the law, he said, adding: “We have a real opportunity to make history here.”

Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said now that his party controls the Senate, the background check bills will come to a vote, unlike in past years, where Republican leadership declined to consider them after House passage.

“The legislative graveyard is over,” Schumer said.

“We’ll see where people stand, and maybe we’ll get the votes,” he said.