The Texas Senate race is shaping up to be the loudest gun-rights fight of the 2026 cycle, and it hinges on a clip from 2020 where the Democratic candidate said exactly what he thought about semi-automatic rifles and magazine limits.

"Nearly half of Texas households have guns, and millions of law-abiding Texans own the very rifles and standard-capacity magazines he would ban. Gun owners will decide this election—and Talarico just gave them another reason to vote." — John Commerford, NRA-PVF Chairman

That's not spin — that's math. If you're running in Texas and you're on record supporting a ban on the most common centerfire rifle in the country, you've handed your opponent a TV ad that basically writes itself.

The other number worth sitting with: Everytown and Giffords outspent the NRA significantly so far this cycle, and a lot of that money is going toward state legislative races — not Senate, not Congress. That's the part most people scroll past.

"Everytown's pivot to state legislatures matters too — that's where magazine bans, permit-to-purchase bills and red-flag laws actually pass, often with far less national attention than a Senate race."

This is exactly how California's magazine ban and Illinois' permit-to-purchase law happened — quietly, at the statehouse level, while everyone was watching Washington. Your state rep and state senator matter more to your carry setup than most people realize.

If you're in one of those five states they're targeting — Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin — do you know who's running for your state legislature this cycle?

Read the full article in The Handbook → | By Steve Duskett