Vice President Kamala Harris really wants you to know that she doesn’t plan to take your guns if she is elected in November.
In fact, she happens to be a gun owner herself, so she can’t possibly be a threat to the Second Amendment, right?
Unfortunately for her, there are a plethora of reasons not to believe her denials. Indeed, if she is elected, it would be even more unfortunate for gun owners.
During the presidential debate, Harris revealed to the world that she is a gun owner while responding to former President Donald Trump’s assertion that “she has a plan to confiscate everybody’s gun.”
Ms. Harris pointed to her record of gun ownership, as well as that of her vice-presidential nominee, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota.
“This business about taking everyone’s guns away — Tim Walz and I are both gun owners,” she said. “We’re not taking anybody’s guns away, so stop with the continuous lying about this stuff.”
This is not the first time that Ms. Harris has spoken of owning a gun, a cultural signifier that over the years has more often been associated with Republicans than Democrats. When she was running for president in the 2020 Democratic primary, Ms. Harris, a former prosecutor, said that she kept a gun for safety.
“I am a gun owner, and I own a gun for probably the reason a lot of people do — for personal safety,” she told reporters in Iowa in 2019. “I was a career prosecutor.”
Yet, less than one week after the debate, Harris wrote a post on X in which she argued that “Congress must renew the assault weapons ban.”
Given that so-called “assault weapons” are guns, it appears she was lying her head off about not wanting to take people’s guns, a point that several other users on X pointed out.
Congress must renew the assault weapons ban. pic.twitter.com/S2GoeAbVpu
— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) September 14, 2024
During her conversation with the National Association for Black Journalists (NABJ), she proudly declared that she has been “adamant” about restricting gun ownership even beyond an assault weapons ban. One of the journalists pointed out that handguns were far more often used to commit crimes than long, scary-looking guns. “I also have been adamant for years and in fact I myself have protested at a gun show probably 10-15 years ago about the gun show loophole and the need to close that,” she replied, not bothering to explain how this would curb gun violence.
Of course, we can’t forget this ringer of a video clip from 2007 that has been circulating on social media. The footage shows Harris advocating for safe storage laws before going full Orwellian. “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,” she said to reporters.
“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.”@KamalaHarris is now & always has
— Firearms Policy Coalition (@gunpolicy) September 18, 2024
been an authoritarian narcissist hell-bent on violating our… pic.twitter.com/0jatUtION6
Yes, Harris has tried to take a more moderate tone during the current campaign. But does anyone truly believe that she’s not a radical anti-gunner simply because she claims to possess a firearm?
The fact is that plenty of anti-gunner Democrats own firearms. Just because they want to restrict your gun rights doesn’t mean they want theirs to be restricted. This is why their gun control laws typically target less affluent Americans. These people believe only elites and government officials should carry firearms, not the unwashed masses.
