As he accepted the GOP’s vice presidential nomination on Wednesday, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) fondly recalled finding 19 loaded firearms stashed in apparently unsecured locations around his grandmother’s home after she died.
The Republican National Convention crowd erupted in applause as Vance told the story, days after a shooter tried to assassinate the party’s presidential nominee, Donald Trump, killing a bystander and seriously injuring two others.
“My mamaw died shortly before I left for Iraq in 2005, and when we went through her things, we found 19 loaded handguns,” said Vance, a former Marine, drawing laughs and cheers from the audience.
“The thing is, they were stashed all over her house — under her bed, in her closet, in the silverware drawer,” he continued. “And we wondered what was going on, and it occurred to us that towards the end of her life, mamaw couldn’t get around so well.
“And so this frail old woman made sure that no matter where she was, she was within arm’s length of whatever she needed to protect her family. That’s who we fight for. That’s American spirit,” he added.
Vance’s acceptance speech included stories about his upbringing, which he detailed in his bestselling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.” Vance was raised mostly by his “mamaw” in Middletown, Ohio.
Gun safety advocates were alarmed by the anecdote about his grandmother’s gun collection.
“His belief that leaving loaded and unlocked guns all over a home was ok is insanity beyond measure,” Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter was murdered in the Parkland, Florida, school shooting, wrote on social media.
Kristin Song, whose son, Ethan, was accidentally killed while playing with an unsecured gun at a friend’s house, wrote: “Mr. Vance unsecured guns are the common denominator for our children dying at an alarming rate… Children as young as 1 Yr. Old. Leaving loaded unsecured guns accessible to children is deadly. My son died because of a negligent gun owner.”
The National Rifle Association has celebrated Vance’s selection as Trump’s running mate.
In a statement on Monday, Randy Kozuch, chair of the NRA’s political action committee, said Vance was an “outstanding choice” and praised him as an “unwavering supporter of constitutional freedoms, especially the right to keep and bear arms.”
