Why Kamala Harris is leaning into her gun ownership

Kamala Harris is leaning right into a little-known facet of her biography – the truth that she is a gun proprietor – to stake out floor on the difficulty of firearms management.

The Democratic presidential nominee helps common background checks, so-called “purple flag” legal guidelines and a ban on assault weapons, however critics are honing in on her previous help for a compulsory buyback of semi-automatic rifles.

After Donald Trump claimed throughout their Tuesday debate she would “confiscate everyone’s gun” if elected, Harris replied that each she and working mate Tim Walz personal weapons.

“We’re not taking anybody’s weapons away, so cease with the continual mendacity about these things,” she mentioned.

Gun management stays among the many most contentious points in American politics however has largely taken a backseat to different coverage areas this election.

The query raised throughout Tuesday’s debate over the place precisely Harris stands was the primary time the difficulty has even come up in a 2024 debate.

Moderator Linsey Davis famous that, amongst different shifting coverage positions, Harris not backs a programme that might drive gun house owners handy over their AR-15s and different assault-style weapons to the federal government.

Harris reiterated her stance at a rally on Thursday in North Carolina. “We who consider within the freedom to reside protected from gun violence will lastly move an assault weapons ban, common background checks, and purple flag legal guidelines”.

Gun buyback proposals gained steam throughout the 2020 Democratic presidential main race, first endorsed by Eric Swalwell and incomes help from Harris, Cory Booker, Bernie Sanders and – most memorably – Beto O’Rourke.

“Now we have to have a buyback programme, and I help a compulsory gun buyback programme,” Harris mentioned in October 2019.

“It is obtained to be good, we obtained to do it the appropriate means. However there are 5 million [assault weapons] not less than, some estimate as many as 10 million, and we’re going to should have good public coverage that’s about taking these off the streets, however doing it the appropriate means.”

Buyback initiatives have taken place in cities throughout the US since not less than the Nineteen Seventies, although research indicates that they’re usually very costly and never efficient as a standalone technique to curb gun violence.

Advocates, nonetheless, level to the impression of two necessary buybacks in Australia following the deadliest mass taking pictures on its soil in 1996. The nation has largely prevented mass firearm violence since that incident.

In making her personal case for buybacks as a part of a broader effort to rein in gun violence, Harris defined again in 2019: “I’m a gun proprietor, and I personal a gun for in all probability the rationale lots of people do – for private security. I used to be a profession prosecutor.”

She argued US politicians had been providing American voters “a false selection” between defending gun rights beneath the Second Modification and taking weapons away.

“It is a false selection that’s borne out of a scarcity of braveness from leaders who should recognise and agree that there are some sensible options to what’s a transparent downside in our nation,” she mentioned.

Harris started her profession because the district lawyer – or the highest prosecutor – in Alameda County after which for the town of San Francisco. She additionally served from 2011 to 2017 as California’s lawyer basic, the highest regulation enforcement job within the state.

William Lockyer, a fellow Democrat who served as California AG from 1999 to 2007, advised the BBC that it was not unusual for a neighborhood or state-level prosecutor to personal a gun, although the position comes with its personal safety staff.

“I don’t find out about Kamala’s expertise as AG, however I obtained a risk on common day by day throughout my eight years,” he mentioned.

Harris indirectly clarify on Tuesday both why she obtained a weapon or why she not helps the thought of a compulsory gun buyback by the federal authorities.

The Harris marketing campaign didn’t reply to the BBC’s request for remark.

It’s uncommon for elected officers within the social gathering to talk brazenly about their expertise as gun house owners.

Harris’s vice-presidential nominee, Tim Walz, is a notable exception.

Walz, from Nebraska, grew up looking throughout summer season breaks and skilled with firearms over the greater than twenty years he spent as a Nationwide Guardsman.

At first of his political profession, he held an A score from the Nationwide Rifle Affiliation and was usually noticed sporting an NRA ballcap.

However Walz modified tack amid a collection of lethal shootings throughout the 2010s, together with at faculties in Sandy Hook, Connecticut and Parkland, Florida.

He held an F score by the point he left Congress and, as Minnesota governor, he signed expansions of background checks and different restrictions into regulation.

“I do know weapons,” he mentioned on the Democratic Nationwide Conference final month.

“I am a veteran. I am a hunter. I used to be a greater shot than most Republicans in Congress and I’ve the trophies to show it. However I am additionally a dad.

“I consider within the Second Modification, however I additionally consider that our first accountability is to maintain our children protected.”

On the Republican facet, Trump has referred to himself as ”one of the best good friend gun house owners have ever had within the White Home”.

Talking to NRA members in February, he bragged that he “did nothing” regardless of strain to take motion after shootings and pledged “nobody will lay a finger in your firearms” if he’s re-elected.

As a New York resident, Donald Trump owned three licenced firearms, two of which he surrendered in 2023 following his arrest on 34 counts of falsifying enterprise information.

The third weapon is alleged to have been legally transferred to Florida, the state the place he now lives.

His felony conviction in New York required that his gun licence there be revoked.

Convicted criminals are barred beneath federal regulation from proudly owning weapons or ammunition, however authorities in Republican-led Florida have expressed little interest in confiscating his weapon.

Trump as soon as claimed in an interview that he “at all times” carried a gun. Below Florida regulation, he can carry his firearm hid and doesn’t want a allow.

The Trump marketing campaign has additionally mentioned his help for gun rights was unshaken by the try on his life this July, when a 20-year-old armed together with his father’s AR-style rifle shot not less than eight rounds in his path and grazed his proper ear with a bullet.

JD Vance, his working mate and a former Marine, has described taking pictures weapons from an early age and was lauded earlier this yr for his “excellent voting report” on defending the Second Modification by the pro-gun group, Gun House owners of America.