Vice President Kamala Harris has already been an integral part of the most extreme anti-Second Amendment administrations in American history. But things will get even worse for responsible gun owners if Harris takes charge next January.
During her very first campaign rally in Wisconsin after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race, Harris pledged that her administration would “pass red flag laws, universal background checks, and an assault weapons ban” – three pillars of anti-Second Amendment activism. Prominent anti-gun groups have flocked to Harris and offered their enthusiastic endorsement, including Everytown, the Community Justice Action Fund, and the Newtown Action Alliance.
March for our Lives, an anti-gun group ostensibly made up of youth activists but which has heavy involvement from seasoned Democrat activists and organizations, has also thrown its support behind Harris, making her the first politician the group has ever endorsed.
In a chilling comment for gun owners, Harris lauded Australia’s gun control measures during a meeting with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in October 2023. “And let us be clear, it does not have to be this way, as our friends in Australia have demonstrated,” she stated. Australia, which imposed a near total ban on civilian ownership of semi-automatic rifles and semi-automatic and pump-action shotguns in 1996, has often been held up as a model by fringe anti-gun groups.
Harris has also embraced the administration’s war on the Second Amendment as a personal project throughout her time in the vice presidency. At an event in March, Harris called on more states to pass red flag laws and announced the creation of a “National Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO) Resource Center.”
As pro-Second Amendment groups have warned, ERPOs are a convenient avenue for anti-gun activists to weaponize legitimate concerns about gun safety to target responsible and law-abiding gun owners. In effect, the policy allows courts to seize privately-owned firearms without any due process or hard evidence that a gun owner may be a danger to himself or others.
Harris is also in charge of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention. Biden established that office in September 2023 supposedly to coordinate federal efforts against gun violence, but in actuality it has waged all-out assault on gun owners and manufacturers.
As the Second Amendment Foundation noted earlier this year, the office “has no website” and “its budget has never been made public. Its staffing levels are not known. Only three actual members have ever been identified – the director and two deputy directors. All three are radical anti-gun zealots.”
Thus far, Harris has faced little scrutiny for her role leading the office or pressure to explain what exactly it has been doing for the past year. But as the new presumptive Democrat nominee, voters now more than ever deserve answers to these questions.
Even with transparency on that front, Harris’s record before she got to the White House could put her in even more hot water with gun owners.
In 2020, for instance, when she was running against Biden for the Democrat nomination, Harris called for a “mandatory buyback” (read: gun grab) program for so-called “assault weapons” – a category that, according to her, includes popular semi-automatic pistols commonly used for self-defense. Explaining her support for a compulsory program, Harris added, “We have to work out the details – there are a lot of details – but I do…We have to take those guns off the streets.”
Harris reiterated her support for gun grabs at least three separate times throughout the rest of her campaign.
Before running for federal office, Harris distinguished herself as one of the most outspoken anti-gun voices in the country as District Attorney of San Francisco and later Attorney General of California.
Harris’s views on the Second Amendment are perhaps best captured by a brief she signed onto in the landmark 2008 Supreme Court case D.C. v. Heller. That brief urged the Court to uphold D.C.’s handgun ban – in effect making clear that Harris does not believe the Second Amendment protects the right to own a handgun.
Instead, the brief Harris endorsed argued that the Second Amendment only protects a “collective” or “militia-related” right to bear arms – and not an individual right. As Cam Ward, a writer on Second Amendment issues for the publication Bearing Arms, put it, “Kamala Harris told the Supreme Court that Americans didn’t have an individual right to possess a firearm that is in common use, turning a right of the people into a privilege to be exercised by a chosen few.”
Harris has never repudiated that interpretation or even offered any explanation for why she signed on to the brief in Heller. Given her statements and actions since, it seems safe to say her views have changed little, if at all.
Kamala Harris has been on a warpath against gun owners since she first entered the public spotlight nearly 20 years ago. Americans expect that crusade will only intensify if she wins the highest office in the land.
Shane Harris is a writer and political consultant from Southwest Ohio. You can follow him on X @shaneharris513.
