First came the self-revelation that Vice President Kamala Harris “Owns a Handgun” as blared in a New York Times headline last month. Next, in no less a substantive forum than an interview with Oprah Winfrey, Ms. Harris startled the liberal media by declaring that she would shoot anyone daring to break into her house.
Coyly claiming that she “probably should not have said” she would actually shoot an intruder, Harris then took advantage of the moment to assert that her gun ownership and her avowed willingness to use it in defense of home and family, was absolute proof that claims she is anti-firearms are nothing other than a vile, Trump-created canard.
While Kamala’s “Dirty Harry” act may have pulled the wool over the liberal media’s eyes, the fact remains that both Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim -- “Tiananmen Square” -- Walz, have a demonstrable history of favoring anti-Second Amendment policies that belie their professed, late-night conversion to gun advocacy.
The New York Times may swoon over Harris’ new platform of “Freedom” as reflected in her tough rhetoric on gun ownership and protecting her home – already tightly guarded by numerous firearms-wielding Secret Service agents – with a Glock handgun, but “freedom” is not reflected in any of the following policies advocated by the Democrat Party’s current standard-bearers:
As San Francisco District Attorney, Harris signed onto a legal brief asserting that the Second Amendment does not guarantee an individual right to keep and bear arms, but only a collective right. The U.S. Supreme Court, in its 2008 Heller decision, correctly found otherwise – that the Second Amendment does indeed guarantee an individual’s right to possess that Glock handgun Harris glibly declared this year would blast an intruder to smithereens.
Both Harris and Walz are on record (repeatedly) declaring that the AR-15 rifle, which happens to be the most popular rifle in the United States, should be banned from individual, civilian possession.
Harris has openly lauded Australia’s gun confiscation program, and has called for mandatory gun buy-back programs.
The Vice President considers “bump stocks,” which are a non-functioning accessory for AR-15 style rifles, to be “machine guns,” notwithstanding the recent Cargill Supreme Court decision stopping ATF from enforcing just such an absurd definition.
Both candidates support expansive so-called “red flag laws” that allow for a court to order seizure of a person’s lawfully owned firearms even without an opportunity for a hearing, upon an assertion by a third party that the gun owner appears to be a “threat” to themselves or others.
The Vice President serves as head of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, which President Biden established last year and provides Harris what amounts to a bully pulpit from which to advocate her gun control predispositions, but little more.
Rest assured, however, if the Harris-Walz team is sworn into office next January, and with the tools available from which to not just advocate for gun control but to implement such policy directives from the Department of Justice to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – and every federal agency in between – Kamala Harris would quickly discard her Dirty Harry image in favor of Michael Bloomberg.
Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia and serves as President of the National Rifle Association.