Since President Joe Biden unceremoniously dropped out, or was forced out, of the 2024 presidential race on July 21, Vice President Kamala Harris has been effectively coronated as the Democratic presidential nominee.
Gun owners should understand that Harris poses the gravest threat to their Second Amendment rights. In fact, Harris’s record suggests that she does not believe the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms at all. Moreover, Harris has repeatedly called for government confiscation of some of America’s most popular firearms.
Harris is an Anti-Second Amendment Extremist
In 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court decided the case District of Columbia v. Heller. The case concerned a challenge to Washington, D.C.’s total ban on handgun ownership. In overruling the ban, the Court made clear that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms for lawful purposes, including self-defense.
The individual right to keep and bear arms protected by the Second Amendment was later affirmed by the Supreme Court in McDonald v. Chicago (2010), which made clear that state and local governments may not infringe upon the right. The Supreme Court again affirmed the individual Second Amendment right in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022), which made clear the Right-to-Carry a firearm for self-defense extends outside the home.
If it was up to Harris, Americans would not enjoy an individual right to keep and bear arms.
In 2008, Harris was the District Attorney of San Francisco. In this capacity, Harris endorsed an amicus curiae brief of district attorneys in support of the District of Columbia and its handgun ban in the Heller case.
Advocating against the individual right to keep and bear arms, the brief argued,
courts have consistently sustained criminal firearms laws against Second Amendment challenges by holding that, inter alia, (i) the Second Amendment provides only a militia-related right to bear arms, (ii) the Second Amendment does not apply to legislation passed by state or local governments,
According to the document, the Second Amendment does not protect an individual right, but rather, the lower court in Heller “create[d]” this right. The brief stated,
The lower court’s decision, however, creates a broad private right to possess any firearm that is a “lineal descendant” of a founding era weapon and that is in “common use” with a “military application” today.
Anticipating the Supreme Court’s move in the next landmark Second Amendment case (McDonald), Harris’s brief reiterated that the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms should not be incorporated to the states. Had this thinking been adopted, state and local governments would be empowered to curtail or even extinguish gun rights without restraint. State and local governments would have been able to bar their residents from owning any firearms whatsoever.
This was, and is, an extremist position.
In February 2008, months prior to the Heller decision, Gallup asked
Do you believe the Second Amendment to the U.S. constitution guarantees the rights of Americans to own guns, or do you believe it only guarantees members of state militias such as National Guard units the right to own guns?
73-percent of those surveyed responded that the Second Amendment protects the right of Americans to own guns, with a mere 20-percent endorsing the militia interpretation.
A Quinnipiac University poll conducted shortly after the Heller decision, in July 2008, mirrored these results. This poll asked respondents, “Would you support or oppose amending the United States Constitution to ban individual gun ownership?” 78-percent opposed such a measure, while only 17-percent were found to be in favor.
A February 2018 Economist/YouGov poll found a paltry 21-percent of respondents favored repealing the Second Amendment.
As for the discrete policy at issue in Heller and that Harris advocated the Supreme Court uphold, a handgun ban, since 1959 Gallup has intermittently asked respondents “Do you think there should or should not be a law that would ban the possession of handguns, except by the police and other authorized persons?” In 2008, a supermajority of 69 percent opposed such a measure. In 2023, opposition was up to 73 percent.
Harris’s extreme views on the Second Amendment are even more dangerous considering her willingness to pack the Supreme Court to secure her and her political allies’ preferred policy outcomes.
In a 2019 article titled, “Kamala Harris Says She’s ‘Open’ to Expanding Supreme Court,” Bloomberg reported,
“I am interested in having that conversation,” [Harris] said in Nashua, New Hampshire, in response to a question about whether she favors adding as many as four seats to the court. “I’m open to this conversation about increasing the number of people on the United States Supreme Court.”
Further, in 2020, New York Times reporter Alexander Burns stated that Harris told him that she was interested in packing the Supreme Court. Burns was recorded stating, “Harris told me in an interview actually that she was absolutely open to doing that…”
There is every reason to believe that any Harris court packing scheme would involve installing a solid anti-Second Amendment majority to the Supreme Court that would work to eliminate recognition of the individual right to keep and bear arms.
Harris Supports Gun Confiscation
Harris has repeatedly supported prohibiting and confiscating commonly-owned semi-automatic firearms, including America’s most popular rifle – the AR-15.
At a 2020 presidential campaign event in Londonderry, N.H. in September 2019, then-presidential candidate Harris told reporters that confiscation of commonly-owned semi-automatic firearms was “a good idea.” Elaborating on her support for a compulsory “buyback” program, the senator added, “We have to work out the details — there are a lot of details — but I do…We have to take those guns off the streets.”
On the September 16, 2019 edition of the “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” Harris reiterated her support for gun confiscation. During a question and answer session, an audience member asked Harris “Do you believe in the mandatory buyback of quote-unquote assault weapons and whether or not you do, how does that idea not go against fundamentally the Second Amendment?”
The candidate responded “I do believe that we need to do buybacks.” Making clear that she believes Americans’ Second Amendment rights are for sale, Harris added “A buyback program is a good idea. Now we need to do it the right way. And part of that has to be, you know, buy back and give people their value, the financial value.”
Further demonstrating Harris’s commitment to gun confiscation, the candidate called for a “mandatory buyback program” during an October 3, 2019 MSNBC gun control forum and again during a November 2019 interview with NBC Nightly News.
Harris appears to have carried this position into the vice president’s office. During an October 26, 2023 state luncheon with Australia Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Harris lauded Australia’s gun control measures. Referencing violence perpetrated with firearms, Harris remarked, “And let us be clear, it does not have to be this way, as our friends in Australia have demonstrated.” (emphasis added).
In 1996, Australia adopted a near total ban on civilian ownership of semi-automatic rifles and semi-automatic and pump-action shotguns. To coincide with the new restrictions, the government instituted a mandatory “buy-back” confiscation scheme where gun owners were warned that they were required to turn their newly-prohibited firearms over to the government for a set price. As the scheme did not grandfather the possession of firearms owned prior to the new restrictions, the ban and “buy-back” amounted to gun confiscation.
NRA members and other gun rights activists must work to inform their family, friends, neighbors, and other freedom-minded individuals about the dangers Harris poses to the Second Amendment, their way of life, and their personal property.
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