WASHINGTON (AP) -- Hoping to capitalize on momentum, Democrats are pushing for House action by Memorial Day on the juvenile justice bill and its new gun restrictions just passed by the Senate. Majority Republicans, anxious to let the issue cool, refused to budge Friday from their plans to hold committee hearings on the matter next week with no floor debate until mid-June. ``We're going to make sure that we do this in a reasonable, rational and responsible way,'' said John Feehery, spokesman for House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill. Democrats said the families of the slain victims and those wounded in the Columbine High School shootings in Colorado last month as well as the students wounded Thursday in Georgia deserve quicker action. ``We should not take a Memorial Day recess until we pass a proper memorial for the slain students in Littleton, Colo., and other school gun tragedies,'' said Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, the Judiciary Committee's ranking Democrat. As part of the push, President Clinton urged 18 House Democrats on Friday to keep up the pressure for a quick vote. He is expected to devote his weekly radio address Saturday to the same message. According to Democratic and administration aides, Clinton told lawmakers at the White House that ``we shouldn't settle'' for only the Senate-passed restrictions and should push in the House for additional measures raising from 18 to 21 the legal age for possessing and purchasing handguns, semiautomatic assault-style weapons, and high-capacity ammunition clips. But as lawmakers headed home for the weekend, Democrats had no consensus on what gun measures they wanted the House to vote on next week. Some wanted to pursue Clinton's demand for a limit of one handgun purchase per month, a proposal that Senate Democrats rejected because it was unlikely to win enough Republican support for passage. House Republicans, for their part, were eager to let the issue to cool after it caused a public relations meltdown for their party during two volatile weeks of Senate debate. To that end, House Republicans were expected to change the subject in their weekly radio address from guns to proposals that would limit the ways Congress can spend Social Security funds. Public sentiment and Democratic pressure in the wake of the Columbine shootings prompted Senate Republicans to retreat on gun policy several times before lawmakers there included new firearms restrictions in the juvenile justice bill that passed Thursday, 73-25. Led by Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, a member of the National Rifle Association's board, Republicans initially defeated a Democratic amendment to the bill to require background checks on all firearms purchases at gun shows. But after a half-dozen rank-and-file Republicans complained to Craig a few hours later, Republicans agreed to make those checks mandatory. By the final vote, senators of both parties also approved measures that would require background checks for all gun transactions at pawn shops and all handguns to be sold with trigger locks. In an additional defeat, public pressure to pass a juvenile justice bill forced Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., to back down on his threat to kill the bill outright. In a stunning finale just hours after the shootings in suburban Atlanta, Vice President Al Gore, a White House hopeful, broke a tie and cast the deciding vote in favor of a Democratic amendment imposing still more restrictions on guns that the Senate had rejected a week earlier. In the end, more Republicans voted for the underlying bill, sponsored by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, than opposed it. Lott was among the senators who voted for the bill. Democrats rejoiced, declaring victory over a powerful gun lobby whose long-standing influence in the halls of Congress made such new restrictions improbable at best before the Colorado shootings. As Democrats crowed, Lott advised Democrats and the rest of Congress to ``move on.'' As the political dust settled Friday on the Senate side of the Capitol, House leaders kicked up more even before any real bipartisan talk had begun on the content of their version of the bill. Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas, criticized Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., for trying to break what Delay said had been an agreement a day earlier to hold hearings on the matter next week and debate in June. ``We were all quite surprised that Mr. Gephardt did not stick to our agreement,'' DeLay said in a statement. ``To address this issue in a haphazard fashion does not do justice to the victims of violence.'' Gephardt, who had rejected that timetable from the House floor Thursday, denied Democratic leaders had ever struck such a deal and lobbied for quicker action. ``At no time did Mr. Gephardt agree to the Republican plan,'' Gephardt's spokeswoman, Sue Harvey, said in a statement. ``Any statements to the contrary are false.'' -=-=- 