In a locker room at the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut, people are waiting in line to have their pictures taken with Hillary Clinton before a rally in the gym. It’s a child-heavy crowd, and Clinton has been chatting easily with them. But soon there’s only one family left and the mood shifts.

Francine and David Wheeler are here with their 13-year-old son, Nate, and his 17-month-old brother, Matty, who is scrambling around on the floor. They carry a stack of photographs of their other son, Benjamin, who was killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, when he was six.

David presses the photos of his dead son on Clinton with the urgency of a parent desperate to keep other parents from having to show politicians pictures of their dead six-year-olds. It is almost exactly seven weeks before another gunman will open fire, killing 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.