The first presidential debate showed Americans a lot about the two men again vieing to run the country, for better or worse. But neither candidate sought to differentiate themselves on gun policy.

That’s a bit surprising since President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump have cultivated gun positions that are polar opposites. Biden has even made his firearms policies a greater part of his re-election bid in recent months. Meanwhile, Trump leads on the question of who would handle gun policy better and has continued to court gun voters through the NRA.

But neither man attempted to pivot the conversation to guns during the hour-and-a-half debate.

That’s perhaps most surprising for Biden. Though the race has been a toss-up, Democrats have traditionally needed to win by a few points to reach the critical mass required in battleground states to ensure a win. Biden has trailed in the vast majority of battleground polling headed into the debate, which meant he should’ve been on more of an offensive to try and shake the race up a bit.

His stilted performance may indeed have shifted the race, but probably not in his favor since his freezing up and stumbling over answers highlighted one of his biggest vulnerabilities. Despite the renewed focus on gun control in the run-up to the debate, he didn’t bring it up. Biden had been pushing the issue to the forefront of his campaign of late.

He spoke at Everytown’s national conference for the first time in his presidency.

“It’s time to do what I did when I was a Senator, ban assault weapons,” Biden said to chants of “four more years” from the crowd. “I mean it. Who in God’s name needs a magazine that can hold 200 shells?”

His campaign released a gun-control ad.

“When Trump was president— children gunned down in classrooms, innocent people killed in church and massacred at a concert. Still, Trump did nothing,” Biden said in the ad. “He sided with the NRA, but I sided with you. I’ve expanded background checks, created an office of gun violence prevention, and now murder rates are down.”

He and his campaign have tweeted support for new gun restrictions on nearly a daily basis. His Surgeon General also just released a new gun-control push.

It may not rival abortion or democracy as a top-tier issue of his campaign, but Biden has certainly been elevating it lately. That’s likely part of a broader effort to excite Democratic voters, who’ve been lukewarm about giving him a second term to this point. Of course, they’ve also been part of the reason he’s gotten low marks on his handling of gun policy as president.

Biden’s approval on firearm policy has actually been lower than his abysmal general approval rating since he took office. The last time the Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research asked about his handling of the issue, Biden clocked in at an all-time low at 31 percent approval. That likely reflects the fact that what he’s been able to accomplish on gun policy, like the pistol brace or “ghost gun” kit administrative bans, fall short of the big-ticket restrictions gun-control advocates want while pissing off many of the gun owners affected by the changes.

The ATF-imposed bans he’s pushed for have been particularly vulnerable to this dynamic.

That approach has left him without strong support from either direction. This is evident in the most recent (pre-debate) Fox News election poll. While Biden was ahead by two points overall, he fell behind Trump on gun policy by the same margin. That was driven by Democrats’ relative lack of support for Biden when compared to how Republicans feel about Trump’s gun policy.

Fox found Republicans were seven points more likely to back Trump’s handling of gun policy than Democrats were to do the same for Biden. Those kinds of numbers are probably why the Biden campaign has tried to emphasize his record on the issue. If they can convince their own voters to come home, it could boost Biden’s overall support.

Of course, that’s a risky approach since some of that opposition is from Democrats who think Biden is too aggressive on the issue.

Minority voters could be especially unhappy with this direction. After all, minorities are the fastest-growing demographic of new gun owners–a trend that has only accelerated since BBiden’s2020 victory. A noticeable slice of the resistance to BBiden’sgun policies inside his own party may come from them, and pushing more restrictions could further alienate them.

Independents are another group that could be turned off by Biden’s approach. Overall, Biden won them by four points in the Fox poll. However, they favored Trump’s handling of guns by two points.

Still, if the Biden Campaign has decided the risks are worth the potential reward, you’d think they’d want to carry that message into what may have been the biggest media event of the campaign. Apparently not, though. Or maybe their candidate wasn’t capable enough to pull off a pivot since guns weren’t directly asked about.

Trump had a less disastrous debate performance than Biden. He was at least somewhat more reserved than he often is at his rallies. But his performance was not exactly good either, and it featured many of the things many Americans have long disliked about him—making wild claims, tossing around insults, and lying about the Capitol Riot.

Trump could have shifted the conversation to guns, too. Like Biden, he had some reason to do so. The Fox poll shows Americans are split but ultimately think he’d be better at handling gun policy. With his overall approval often coming in as down in the dumps as Biden’s, he needs to try and ensure his supporters show up at the polls as well. Gun policy could motivate some of them.

Of course, Trump has his own unique risks in bringing up guns during the debate. It could remind everyone he, the pro-gun candidate, can’t currently own guns because of his felony convictions. In turn, that would put the attention back on his biggest vulnerability.

We’ll have to see what happens in the coming weeks as polls shift in response. As of now, both candidates are still committed to the next debate. If they both end up on stage in September, an increasingly uncertain prospect, perhaps they’ll debate guns then.