In recent weeks, Vice President Kamala Harris has attempted to insulate herself from claims that she would target Second Amendment rights as president. But her own prior statements and actions over the past four years give gun owners reason for alarm.
Since becoming the Democrat nominee, Harris has repeatedly stated that she is “not taking anybody’s guns away.” In her first solo interview, Harris said that she “supports the Second Amendment,” and during her debate with Donald Trump she even claimed that she is a gun owner – raising eyebrows nationwide.
“I own a gun for probably the reason a lot of people do — for personal safety,” she said. “I was a career prosecutor.” (Voters are apparently supposed to ignore the fact that Harris hails from the most notoriously anti-gun state in the country in California, where law-abiding gun owners are routinely arrested for the “crime” of defending their lives and their property from violent intruders.)
As far as the corporate media is concerned, Harris is now a veritable Second Amendment champion. She has carefully repeated the Democrat lines of wanting “common-sense gun reform” and believing that “Americans should have the freedom to live safe from gun violence.”
But Harris’s ostensible moderation on gun rights is a strikingly recent invention.
As a resurfaced clip of Harris from her time as San Francisco District Attorney now making the rounds on social media shows, the vice president has evinced no respect for Americans’ constitutional rights – and not just the right to bear arms. “Just because you legally possess a gun in the sanctity of your locked home doesn’t mean that we’re not going to walk into that home and check to see if you’re being responsible and safe in the way you conduct your affairs,” Harris says.
In addition to suggesting a blatant violation of the Second Amendment, Harris’s comment is also an explicit promise to trample Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights, which protect against “unreasonable searches and seizures.” For Harris, someone merely possessing a gun is reason enough to send law enforcement tearing through their home looking for supposed “violations” of obscure laws which Democrats like Harris write as an excuse to confiscate firearms.
As AMAC Newsline has previously reported, Harris also signed on to a brief in the landmark 2008 Supreme Court case D.C. v. Heller which argued that Americans are not entitled to possess firearms unless they are “affiliated with any state-regulated militia.” In effect, Harris was arguing that the Second Amendment as we know it should be rendered null and void.
During her 2020 presidential primary campaign, Harris even mocked Joe Biden’s hesitation to commit to using executive authority to confiscate so-called “assault weapons” – most often defined by Democrats as any semi-automatic weapon, including many used for hunting and self-defense. Even Biden had to admit it was unconstitutional.
Harris openly mocked Biden for showing at least some reverence for the Constitution, quipping: “I would just say, hey, Joe, instead of saying no we can’t, let’s say, yes we can.”
Harris also called for a “mandatory buyback” program in 2020 – a favorite liberal euphemism for gun grabs. Then-Senator Harris specifically pointed to Australia’s crackdown on gun owners as a model, where authorities forcibly confiscated privately-owned firearms.
As Vice President, Harris’s crusade against the Second Amendment has only intensified. In March, she called on more states to pass red flag laws and announced the creation of a “National Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO) Resource Center.” As Second Amendment advocates have warned, ERPOs are little more than legal cover for anti-gun zealots to seize privately owned firearms.
Harris also leads the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, which Biden established last September. Despite the benign-sounding name, the office has done little to actually stop gun violence, and has instead targeted law-abiding gun owners and firearms manufacturers.
Based on current data, about 105 million Americans – or about 40 percent of the country’s adult population – own a firearm. Harris’s past comments indicate that she views every one of these Americans as a potential threat, and would not hesitate to send law enforcement into their homes.
Recognizing the political reality that gun owners are a powerful voting bloc in national elections, Harris will undoubtedly continue to rhetorically pivot toward the center on the Second Amendment between now and Election Day.
But voters should look to Harris’s record as a progressive prosecutor in California and as the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate to get a true sense for how a President Harris views the Second Amendment and how she would treat gun owners. The reality is that no Democrat could become the party’s nominee in 2024 without being an anti-gun extremist.
As her actions show, Harris fits the bill.
Andrew Shirley is a veteran speechwriter and AMAC Newsline columnist. His commentary can be found on X at @AA_Shirley.
