AP Photo/Charles Krupa

The media pays a lot of attention to anti-gun voices that have victim or survivor status after their name. It’s why the Parkland Kids became so famous, after all. The press loves a victim.

However, the media tends to prefer their victims to advance the preferred narrative.

Now, the brother of a child killed in the Sandy Hook massacre is running for office. Ordinarily, this would be blasted all over the media. However, candidate JT Lewis isn’t one to advance the gun control agenda.

JT Lewis launched a campaign on Monday for state Senate, vying to represent a district that includes Newtown, along with several other towns in southwestern Connecticut. The college student is an avid supporter of President Trump, who he hopes will gain four more years in 2020 as he aims to claim his own term in office.

Although he faces an uphill battle, he would not be the youngest state lawmaker in history. A handful of 18-year-olds have been elected to state offices, and, in Connecticut specifically, a 20-year-old politician, and onetime Republican, joined the legislature in 2015, serving for just two years. (Aundré Bumgardner has since left the GOP because of Trump.)

“I’m not doing this to break a record,” Lewis said in an interview with The Washington Post. “I’m doing it to make sure my brother’s story is told as many times as possible.”

Lewis appears to be the first family member of a Newtown victim to run for elected office. More than six years after the killing rampage, the episode remains a touchstone — the deadliest mass shooting at a high school or grade school in American history.

With that, one would think that Lewis would be joining in with the chorus of folks like David Hogg, despite his Republican designation. He wants to talk about his brother, a boy who sacrificed his life so nine of his classmates could escape. Wouldn’t that suggest he’s anti-gun?

It shouldn’t.

As an advocate for school security — favoring efforts to install bulletproof glass and increase the presence of armed guards over tightening gun rules — Lewis represents a notable contrast with some of the most prominent voices that have emerged from the so-called mass shooting generation. Their testimony, which gained widespread attention after the shooting in Parkland, Fla., has featured pleas for gun control joined to condemnations of Republicans friendly with the National Rifle Association. Some of the Parkland teenagers have spoken out against intensifying security at their high school, which David Hogg, a survivor and activist, said was beginning to feel like a prison.

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But Lewis said efforts to introduce new controls on guns have also not been successful.

“In the 20 years since Columbine, the predominant amount of time has been spent on gun control, and we still have shooting today,” he said. “If there had been an armed guard at Sandy Hook, I’m pretty sure my brother would be alive.”

Now, Lewis isn’t a strong supporter of the Second Amendment. He says he would be willing to compromise, which is a problem for me. However, since I’m not able to vote for him or against him, it doesn’t matter all that much.

However, it’s also important to note that he knows damn good and well that had there been a guard at that school, his brother likely would be alive today. That’s something that should be impossible to dispute.

He also favors hardening schools, something that could be done without infringing on people’s constitutionally-protected rights. It’s also something Democrat are notorious for opposing for some inane reason.

If he echoed the anti-gun standard, Lewis would be on every show on CNN and MSNBC, and we all know it. There would be wall-to-wall coverage of him because of his status as the sibling of someone killed in a mass shooting.