The lack of debate on guns in the election season reflected the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown in December 2012

Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting: Now Ben Wheeler would be a college student. His grandpa, Carmen Lobis, said he still gets upset when he looks at pictures. Wheeler perished in December 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, along with nineteen other children and six adults. The slaughter stunned the country at the time and is now ranked as the second-worst school shooting in American history.

“I had a very, very special relationship with Ben,” the now-87-year-old Lobis said in an interview with a media report. “It was horrible to lose him. It is still the same.”

Even though it’s seldom addressed, gun safety is a topic that comes up every election year, and Lobis has fought to promote it in the almost 12 years since that massacre.

In her public speaking engagements on gun safety, Lobis has raised issues such as whether particular gun types need to be forbidden, how persons with mental health disorders are still able to get powerful weapons, and how to safely store a handgun.

“The frustrating thing was I always got the answers that I wanted but never changed anybody’s mind,” Lobis said.

“It is completely nonsensical…Their actions are motivated more by an innate passion or worry that someone may seize their firearms than by any rational thought process.”

Notwithstanding a number of high-profile gun violence incidents this year that have occurred in the midst of the presidential race, gun control does not rate as a top issue in an election that is primarily focused on the economy.

The most startling of these occurred on July 13, when former President Donald Trump was slightly injured at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, by a gunshot fired by a would-be assassin.

Six weeks later, on September 4, a problematic student at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, fatally shot two pupils and two teachers.

Then, on a golf trip at Trump’s West Palm Beach, Florida, golf club, just last weekend, another would-be assassin crept up on the former president from behind some bushes. Before he could fire a gun, a Secret Service member saw him, maybe sparing Trump’s life for a second time this summer.

Lobis said that he still doesn’t see a national breakthrough for the problem. After all, what would really alter America’s gun regulations if the horrific Sandy Hook massacre hadn’t?

“I see other issues — the economy, abortion and a few of the others — seem to be getting the majority of discussion and interest right now,” Lobis said.

Do I believe that gun safety is crucial? Indeed. When we have all the laws that we have, which prohibit owning, renting, selling, purchasing, or operating a vehicle without a lot of paperwork because automobiles may be deadly devices…However, when another issue arises that claims more lives and people choose not to take action.”

During Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris’s debate earlier this month, the topic of guns was briefly discussed. Harris changed the subject of her question to address Trump’s assertion that, should she win, she will take away Americans’ right to bear arms.

“Tim Walz and I both own firearms…Harris said, “Nobody’s weapons are being taken away. “So stop with the continuous lying about this stuff.”

Along with Tim Walz, her campaign companion, she has also acknowledged in public that she owns a pistol.

That’s the limit of the gun argument this election season, at least thus far.

Lobis, for his part, applauded Harris’s position, seeing it as a means of winning over centrist voters who are still troubled by Democrats’ gun laws.

“I’m basically a middle-of-the road conservative,” he said. “I don’t want to see the Second Amendment restricted. I’m only attempting to regulate something that kills well over 40,000 people year with reasoning.”

He now said that when November draws near, he would keep his grandson in mind when it comes time to cast his ballot.

“He plays a role in my vote choice,” Lobis said, adding his own recommendation. “Kamala Harris has the right approach.”