HOUSTON — Gov. Greg Abbott’s campaign sent me an email one morning, showing the governor aiming a pump-action shotgun in my direction. This was a view of an elected official I had never seen — the get-your-hands-up view. If I contributed $25 to his campaign, I would be entered in a contest to win a shotgun. The subject line of the email read: “Shotgun!” It was a typical morning in Texas.

The prize was special, though. It was not a rare antique. It was, the email noted three times, a Texas-made shotgun.

Those are some of the most potent words in the state’s vocabulary: Texas-made. In a cupboard in our home here, we had a bottle of 1835, a bourbon bottled in Texas and named for the year of the first battle for Texas independence. My crunchy peanut butter is made with Texas-grown peanuts. My salsa of choice is Native Texan (“Born in Texas, Never Leavin’ Texas”). I am not sure where our minivan was made, but as I idle at red lights I know the heritage of the Toyota Tundra in front of me. The stickers on the pickup trucks, built in San Antonio, declare: “Born in Texas, Built by Texans.”