About 42% of Americans own a gun, and there are more than 1 million guns in Texas alone. Although gun control measures are broadly popular, Democrats fear alienating gun owners in swing states.

In 2000, Al Gore was widely believed to have lost his home state of Tennessee, and the presidency, because of his anti-gun stance against George W Bush, a Texan.

Mr. Cargill is a gun owner, activist, trafficker and Second Amendment purist. He began carrying a gun when his grandmother, who raised him, was assaulted and raped in Florida. “The fact that she was in such distress and I wasn’t there to help taught me that I need to make sure this doesn’t happen to any other woman,” he said .

In June, he won a Supreme Court ruling against Merrick Garland, President Joe Biden’s attorney general, for the use of bumps, a device that hooks onto the butt of a rifle, held against the shoulder, and uses recoil energy to strike the butt of a rifle. trigger against the shooter’s finger to make the weapon fire faster.