Vice President Kamala Harris doesn’t have Joe Biden’s long anti-gun record, but we have to face one inescapable fact: It ain’t for trying.
She favored gun control in pretty much every political campaign she’s run. Now that she’s the presumptive nominee, more or less, there was never any doubt that she’d go in that direction with this one.
It seems that we didn’t have to wait too long at all, either.
In her first campaign address since President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race, Vice President Kamala Harris emphasized her support for new gun restrictions.
On Monday, Harris rallied with Democratic campaign staff in Wilmington, Delaware. She laid out her vision for her own potential presidency, which included a number of new gun-control laws. She described herself and the campaign staffers as “we who believe in the freedom to live safe from gun violence.” Then, she made specific policy promises.
“That’s why we will work to pass universal background checks, Red Flag laws, and an assault weapons ban,” Harris said.
However, Harris ran to the left of Biden on guns during the 2020 primary. They both opposed the Supreme Court’s landmark finding in 2008’s Heller decision that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms, but Harris actually signed on to a brief opposing the suit as California Attorney General. While they both backed a so-called assault weapons ban and buyback, Harris went further by advocating for owners to be forced to sell their firearms to the government. The two also clashed over the use of executive power to implement new gun restrictions.
And now she’s the most likely nominee for the Democratic Party and she’s most definitely going to push gun control should she win.
The fact that she didn’t take long at all to start talking about it indicates that it’ll be a major priority for her campaign and, should she win, her presidency.
Based on her previous position on what an assault weapon ban would entail, we can expect a new one to look similar. In other words, if she gets her way, you’re going to either have to give up your AR-15s or become a felon. I’m pretty sure her version of universal background checks wouldn’t include exceptions for anything, meaning your heirs will have to undergo a background check before taking possession of your gun collection after you shuffle off this mortal coil.
Nothing she’s saying gives us any reason to relax going forward and all the more reason to dig in and get prepared to do battle, metaphorically speaking.
After all, Joe Biden has been terrible for gun rights. Kamala Harris in the Oval Office might well be infinitely worse, if you can believe that.
The upside is that her approval rating is somewhere south of Antarctica, so there’s a very good chance that Trump will win in November. However, if that doesn’t come to pass, well, we have an idea what we’re in for. None of it is good.
The election this year was always going to be important, but while there has been a lot of interesting developments, none of them change that importance one bit.
