There are 15 major contenders for the Republican party’s presidential nomination. Together, they own at least 40 guns.
Some contenders have been building their collections since childhood. Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina, is up to 12, including an AR-15 assault weapon that he has talked about using if law and order ever breaks down in his neighborhood. Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry is so well-armed, he has a gun for jogging.
Others were city kids who didn’t own guns until later in life. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida bought a .357 Magnum revolver in 2010, the year he ran for Senate.
Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas grew up in the suburbs of Houston and owns two guns: a .357 Magnum revolver and a Beretta Silver Pigeon II shotgun, according to a spokeswoman.
Former tech chief executive Carly Fiorina, now considering a presidential run, owns five guns. Her self-defense plan revolves around a Glock 17 9-mm pistol.
Two other city-bred presidential hopefuls, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, don’t own guns.
The stories behind how the GOP presidential contenders got their guns — or, in some cases, why they didn’t — are as diverse as the field itself. Nevertheless, their political views on guns are almost all the same.
Nearly every GOP candidate is broadly opposed to new limits on the purchase or use of guns.
In fact, with the exception of Christie — the field’s one true outlier — those who have been rated by the National Rifle Association range from A-plus all the way down to … A-minus.
Eleven of them are set to appear next month at the NRA’s annual conference.
The near-unanimity on the issue, even from a group with such different personal experiences, underscores the status of guns in modern-day conservatism. Even for those who don’t own them, they are a bellwether of individual liberty, a symbol of what big government wants and shouldn’t have.
“If a party’s a shopping mall,” Graham said in an interview, “one of the anchor tenants is the Second Amendment.”
As the 2016 campaign gets going, guns and hunting will inevitably be part of its political theater. That might offer a chance for longtime gun-owning candidates to stand out. For now, however, the Republicans who grew up in rural gun culture — Perry, Graham, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee — are mainly at the back of the pack.
To some gun-rights activists, what matters is not what the candidates shoot, but what they believe.
“I, personally, don’t care,” said Michael Hammond, legislative counsel for the Gun Owners of America. “What I care about is where they stand on the Second Amendment, not how many guns they have.”
