Harris, who backed a handgun ban as S.F. DA, now brags about owning a Glock and shooting home intruders.
Vice President Kamala Harris uses every opportunity she gets to remind pro–Second Amendment voters, “I’m a gun owner, too!”
Harris first touted her gun ownership during the first and only presidential debate against former president Donald Trump last month. During a live-streamed rally hosted by Oprah Winfrey the next week, the media mogul brought up the debate exchange and said Harris’s gun ownership was news to her.
Harris then infamously told Winfrey, “If somebody breaks into my house, they’re getting shot.” (It’s worth noting that as vice president, she receives Secret Service protection and lives on the grounds of the U.S. Naval Observatory in northwest Washington, D.C.)
“Here’s my point, Oprah. I’m not trying to take everyone’s guns away. I believe in the Second Amendment,” Harris said, claiming she supports “common sense” gun-control measures.
But gun-rights advocates are unconvinced by Harris’s loud-and-proud gun ownership shtick.
“Just because Kamala Harris says she owns a gun, whoop-de-dee, who cares?” said Dudley Brown, president of National Association for Gun Rights. “What’s she going to do on guns? We all know what she’s going to do on guns. She’s going to be terrible if she wins, just like Joe Biden has been terrible. And her owning a firearm has obviously no bearing on what she does in terms of public policy.”
Aidan Johnston, the director of federal affairs for Gun Owners of America, says, “If Kamala Harris has ever supported the Second Amendment, I’ve never seen it.”
Harris’s attacks on the Second Amendment date back as far as 2006, when she served as San Francisco district attorney and supported a total handgun ban in the city — a ban so radical that even then-Mayor Gavin Newsom didn’t support it. The measure, Proposition H, would have prohibited city residents from buying, selling, or owning handguns of any kind, and banned “all City residents, without exception, from selling, distributing, transferring and manufacturing firearms and ammunition.”
The ban, which was ultimately struck down by the courts, would have made it illegal for residents to possess exactly the kind of gun — a Glock — that Harris now says she owns.
Harris later signed an amicus brief in the case of D.C. v. Heller that argued the Second Amendment gave Americans no protections. Harris argued in her brief that “the Second Amendment applies only to federal legislation, not to legislation of the states or local governments” and that “the Second Amendment provides only a militia-related right to bear arms.”
Harris espoused a similar disdain for the Second Amendment during her first unsuccessful bid for president in 2019. At the time, she rejected the idea that she would need Congress’s approval before imposing a ban on “assault weapons.” She also supported the mandatory confiscation of the 20 million-plus that are already in circulation.
And in 2020, Harris spoke out against stand-your-ground laws that allow the use of deadly force against an intruder without forcing the homeowner to retreat first.
The vice president said at the time that such laws “have often and frequently been used as an excuse or cover for people who are motivated by racism and racial profiling . . . it has been used as an excuse to kill black and brown people and in particular black and brown young men.”
While Harris has since sought to walk back some of her rhetoric on guns in favor of a proposed ban on the most popular rifles in the U.S. — gun owners who spoke to NR say they see through her political flip-flopping on the issue.
Still, Brown says, the recent rhetoric shows the Harris-Walz campaign understands that it’s “very dangerous to be anti-gun in modern American politics, especially when you’re running for a nationwide office.”
“There are many people who ‘bullet vote’ – they vote on the gun issue first and foremost and if you’re bad on the gun issue, they will never cast a vote for you ever,” he said, adding that Harris’s comments show that Democrats understand this is a third rail.
He points to at least one example where a push to restrict guns proved politically poisonous to Democrats: In 1994, the party lost control of the U.S. House in part by pushing for an assault-weapons ban.
Johnston suggests Harris’s sudden interest in appealing to gun owners shows the importance of the huge rise in gun ownership the country has seen since the Covid-19 pandemic began: Between 2020 and 2023, more than 22 million Americans became first-time gun owners.
“I personally don’t know a single gun owner who’s voting for Kamala Harris,” said Johnston, whose group represents more than 2 million gun owners. “I don’t think anyone in any of my circles has fallen for the fake camo hats or the fake rhetoric.”
Lisa Ludwig is the founder and president of Long Island Women’s Firearm Club and the owner of a firearm instruction school, She Trains You. Ludwig, who teaches concealed carry classes, didn’t vote in the 2016 or 2020 general elections because she didn’t like her options.
She was “shocked” to hear Harris say she owns a Glock – but says she’d still never vote for the vice president, who she views as disingenuous. “I felt like it was almost a ploy to be like, ‘Oh, you know, don’t discount us because we’re one of you.’”
Instead, Ludwig is trying to decide between voting for Trump and staying home once again on Election Day. “I’m still kind of torn, to be honest.”
But even Trump has been disappointing on the gun issue, said Brown, who plans to vote third-party this Election Day because he will not vote for any politician who does not meet his bar on the issue.
“I think Trump harmed himself when he was president. He’s tried to make up that ground, but there are a lot of very skeptical Republican-based voters who are not happy with Donald Trump. I happen to be one of them. I won’t vote for the man,” he said.
Meanwhile, for Johnston, the choice is clear.
“I think anyone who votes for someone like Kamala Harris or Tim Walz and owns a firearm, I’m not sure that they are very intent on keeping those firearms,” he said. “Maybe they think of themselves more as temporary gun owners because they’re willing to give up those rights and turn in their guns at maybe the next mandatory buyback.”