WASHINGTON—Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz huddled with a borrowed shotgun in a Louisiana duck blind last week, his face smeared with black greasepaint.
He was there to shoot a campaign video with Phil Robertson, the gray-bearded patriarch of reality TV’s “Duck Dynasty” clan. The junior U.S. senator from Texas, donning camouflaged overalls, is shown squeezing off a couple of rounds toward the gray sky. It was not immediately clear whether any ducks were harmed during the making of the ad.
Looking into the camera, Robertson says his selection criteria for endorsing a candidate include “would they kill a duck, put ‘em in a pot and make ’em a good duck gumbo.”
“You’re one of us, my man,” he then tells Cruz.
Cruz has made the defense of Second Amendment rights a cornerstone of his presidential campaign, touting his past legal work fighting against gun control laws. In his three years in the U.S. Senate, Cruz’s voting record has earned an A+ rating from the National Rifle Association. Fiery criticism of President Barack Obama’s efforts to tighten background checks for gun purchases is a staple of Cruz stump speeches: The candidate quipped that back in Texas the term “gun control” means that you “hit what you’re aiming at.”
But records suggest the 45-year-old politician’s passion for the issue emerged relatively recently in his life, coinciding with his ascent in Republican circles in Texas.
In an autobiography published last year, Cruz recounts how after he moved to Austin in 2003 to serve as the state’s appointed solicitor general, he became concerned about leaving his wife Heidi at home alone while he traveled. The couple had previously lived in Washington, where each had jobs in the administration of President George W. Bush.
“Worried that an intruder might come through the window, I placed a hatchet beneath our bed, and started to tell her to grab the hatchet if anything happened,” wrote Cruz. “As I was saying this, it struck me ... this was stupid. Heidi is five-foot-two. The last thing I wanted was for my beautiful, petite wife to be trying to swing a hatchet at a large, menacing robber coming through the window.”
The next day, Cruz recounts, he bought her a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum revolver to keep in the bedside table. According to his campaign, Cruz also owns a 12-gauge Beretta Silver Pigeon shotgun for bird hunting, though a spokeswoman declined to disclose when he bought the weapon. The campaign also declined to say whether he holds a permit to carry a concealed firearm.
