• by Philip Rosenstein , Staff Writer, January 25, 2016

For some in the GOP, positions on gun rights are absolutes. You either support the Second Amendment and reject any federal restrictions on firearms, or you are trying to take guns away from American citizens.

Of course, there are Republicans who don’t espouse such partial views on gun control, but the rhetoric in the GOP primary supports this unconditional stance on firearms.

The elevated position gun rights have taken in the wake of countless mass shootings, makes gun rights an especially thorny issue for GOP presidential hopeful New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

New Jersey is, according to magazine Guns & Ammo, among the worst states in the country for gun owners. Gov. Christie himself receives a C grade from the NRA. He even said that when he arrived on the political stage, his motivation for pursuing politics was in response to the New Jersey Senate’s move to repeal an assault-weapons ban.

Christie often refers to his past as a federal prosecutor to highlight his tough stance on crime and formidable experience prosecuting terrorists. He speaks of a time when he spent his “life protecting our country” from terrorists.

Despite his apparently mild gun control record, Christie now advocates wholesale rejection of any effort to regulate guns.

In late November of last year, Christie did not express support for a bill in the U.S. Congress that would have banned people on a terrorist watch list from buying guns.

More recently, he vetoed a state bill that would have barred people convicted of "carjacking, gang criminality, racketeering and terroristic threats" from buying guns in New Jersey. The bill received overwhelming bipartisan support and had Republican sponsors.

So Gov. Christie has changed his tune on guns. When pressed on why he has changed his mind, Christie told “Face the Nation” host John Dickerson: “I have grown up a bit and changed my view and been educated on it.”

Whether he has been educated on the data behind the issue of gun control, or educated on the fact that gun rights are an issue of deep cultural significance among many primary GOP voters, one can only guess.

State Assemblyman Timothy Eustace, a Democrat representing Bergen, put it concisely: “He signed reasonable legislation before he was running for president. Now that he’s running for president, he doesn’t.”