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An issue that affects candidates and voters nationwide

Only one of the nearly two dozen major Democratic presidential candidates has not seen a mass shooting take place in their state while in office: Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii.

For the purpose of this analysis, ABC News defined a mass shooting as an incident where four or more people were shot or killed, not including the shooter.

Harris, for example, who has made gun control a key part of her 2020 platform, held office in California when two of the state's most deadly mass shootings in recent history took place: 14 people were killed in San Bernardino in 2015 and 12 people were killed in a shooting at a college bar in Thousand Oaks in 2018.

Colorado has also seen some of the most notable mass shootings in the country and there were two candidates in the race from the state: Sen. Michael Bennet and former Gov. John Hickenlooper. Hickenlooper dropped out of the presidential race on Aug. 15 and later announced that he would run for a Colorado Senate seat in 2020.

After a shooting at an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater in 2012 claimed 12 lives, Hickenlooper signed gun control measures that required background checks for private and online gun sales and banned high-capacity magazines. Bennet also voted to ban high-capacity magazines, but in 2010 voted to oppose restricting the right to bear arms and in 2009 voted to allow Amtrak riders to check bags containing guns.

\"PHOTO:
AFP/Newscom
PHOTO: A map shows the locations of mass shootings in the U.S. since January 2019 that have resulted in at least 4 people being killed or wounded, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
>

During Biden's nearly five decades in public office, there were dozens of mass shootings, which has in turn made Biden a longtime advocate for gun control. As a U.S. senator, he introduced the assault weapons ban, which was signed into law in 1994.

And after the deaths of 20 first-grade students and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, then-Vice President Biden led a new task force on gun violence. Four months after the tragedy in Connecticut, Biden's modest measure on background checks passed the House, but didn't make it out of the Senate.

Who has switched their stance on guns?

For O'Rourke, a minor switch came just a few months into the 2020 cycle, after Booker announced his proposed plan, and again after the shooting in El Paso shattered his hometown.

Asked about establishing federal gun licensing in May, O'Rourke initially told reporters on the campaign trail that it went \"too far.\" But after a night of reflection, he changed his mind.

\"What I think Sen. Booker has done is to push us past that to seek to do even more, and I'm grateful that he's done that and I, you know, as I've thought about it, I really think that we should be looking at everything,\" O'Rourke said the next day on the trail.

\"PHOTO:
Mario Tama/Getty Images
PHOTO: Democratic presidential candidate former Rep. Beto O'Rourke shakes hands at his first California campaign rally, held at Los Angeles Trade-Technical College, on April 27, 2019, in Los Angeles.
>

After the shooting in El Paso, O'Rourke also came out in support of a buyback program.

For the former governor of Colorado, the evolution on guns was a longer, more-complicated process.

\"This wasn't a Colorado problem. This is a human problem,\" Hickenlooper told ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos in 2012, in the wake of the Aurora shooting. \"Even if he didn't have access to guns, this guy was diabolical. … He would have done something to create this horror.\"

Since then, Hickenlooper has adapted his tone, and more than once. Colorado has passed measures expanding background checks and limiting magazine sizes to 15 rounds, despite backlash from gun rights groups.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who dropped out of the presidential race on Aug. 28, has also evolved, tumbling from an \"A\" rating from the National Rifle Association to an \"F\" -- a point of pride, she's said.

\"I didn't have much of an understanding about what gun violence actually looks like in a community,\" Gillibrand said in a 2016 podcast about her past pro-gun stance, when she represented a rural upstate New York district.

She was changed by conversations with families who'd been devastated by gun violence in cities, she said.

Gillibrand was joined by fellow former presidential hopeful Rep. Tim Ryan, of Ohio, who was also formerly given an \"A\" rating from the NRA. Ryan shifted his stance more recently than Gillibrand, speaking out after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012. He has since donated roughly $20,000 to gun control organizations.

\"PHOTO:
Scott Olson/Getty Images
PHOTO: Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand speaks to guests during a campaign stop, March 19, 2019, in Dubuque, Iowa.
>

How veterans who were trained to use guns view them on US streets

There were three candidates in the race who were trained to use guns in combat. Even though their legislative records differ, all three support a ban on military-style assault rifles.

After 49 people were killed at Pulse, a nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in 2016, Marine veteran and current Rep. Seth Moulton tweeted a photo of himself in uniform holding a military-grade rifle, saying, \"I know assault rifles. I carried one in Iraq. They have no place on America's streets.\"

The rifle the Massachusetts congressman was holding is not available to civilians and was not the same gun that was used in the nightclub shooting.

Moulton, who dropped out of the presidential race on Aug. 23, also authored bipartisan legislation to ban bump stocks, an accessory that increases the firing rate, after the device was used in the deadly mass shooting in Las Vegas that killed 58 people in 2017.

\"There are common sense reforms, there are common sense laws that we can pass, that are respectful of gun rights but still will reduce this public health crisis in America,\" he said in an interview on ABC's \"This Week\" with co-anchor Martha Raddatz after the Las Vegas shooting.

Also after the shooting in Las Vegas, Buttigieg, a U.S. Navy Reserve veteran who was deployed to Afghanistan, similarly denounced AR-style rifles.

\"PHOTO:
Charlie Neibergall/AP
PHOTO: Democratic presidential candidate South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg speaks during a town hall meeting, Tuesday, April 16, 2019, in Fort Dodge, Iowa.
>

\"I did not carry an assault weapon around a foreign country so I could come home and see them used to massacre my countrymen,\" he tweeted.

Gabbard, a major in the Hawaii Army National Guard, has come under criticism for not sponsoring gun control measures that are widely supported by other Democrats in the House. But she has voted to ban assault weapons, and, shortly after the deadly high school shooting in Parkland, Florida, killed 17, Gabbard added her name as a co-sponsor of the Assault Weapons Ban of 2018.

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