Senator JD Vance used his Wednesday night address to the Republican National Convention to share the story of his hardscrabble upbringing and make the case that his party best understands the challenges facing struggling Americans. The 39-year-old Ohio senator is a relative political unknown. In his first prime-time speech since becoming the nominee for vice president, Vance spoke of growing up poor in Kentucky and Ohio, his mother addicted to drugs and his father absent, and how he later joined the military and went on to the highest levels of U.S. politics. Vance told a story about finding 19 loaded handguns spread around his grandmother's house after she died. He said "we wondered what was going on. And it occurred to us that towards the end of her life, Mamaw couldn't get around so well. And so this frail old woman made sure that no matter where she was, she was within arm's length of whatever she needed to protect her family." He also spoke about building factories in the United States and protecting the wages of American workers.