Former President Donald Trump (R) and Vice President Kamala Harris (D) met on the debate stage on Sept. 10, and despite the numerous “fact checks” on Trump from the moderators, they said nothing when Harris made this incredible claim.
“And then this business about taking everyone’s guns away. Tim Walz and I are both gun owners. We’re not taking anybody’s guns away. So stop with the continuous lying about this stuff,” said Harris after Trump noted that “[Harris] wants to confiscate your guns.”
The claim “we’re not taking anybody’s guns away” stands out in particular, as Harris does, in fact, want to take firearms away from law-abiding Americans.
Just last week, Harris tweeted, “Together, we passed the first bipartisan law addressing gun violence prevention in nearly 30 years, but we have more work to do. We must pass an assault weapons ban, universal background checks, and red flag laws.”
Harris’ issue page, finally published recently, notes that “She’ll ban assault weapons,” among a handful of other anti-Second Amendment policy positions.
“Assault weapons,” as they are deliberately mislabeled for purely political purposes, are actually commonly-owned semi-automatic rifles. Estimates from the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) show that there are more than 28 million of these rifles in circulation. They are clearly protected under the “common-use” standard established by the U.S. Supreme Court in D.C. v. Heller (2008). With nearly 30 million in circulation, that standard is easily met.
As for the ban that Harris is so eager to impose, look no further than its previous iteration to see how ineffective it would be, not to mention unconstitutional. The Federal Assault Weapons Ban, passed in 1994 and lasting a decade, was found to have a negligible, if any, effect on crime. As the NRA Institute for Legislative Action (ILA) reported, “The congressionally mandated study of the federal ‘assault weapon ban’ of 1994-2004 found that the ban had no impact on crime, in part because ‘the banned guns were never used in more than a modest fraction of gun murders.’”
It’s not just bans that Harris supports either. She has previously endorsed a so-called “buy-back” for these same rifles. While running for president roughly five years ago, Harris told reporters that a “buy-back” was a “good idea.” Elaborating on such a program, Harris 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.”
This was far from the only time she endorsed the idea of mandatory confiscation of lawfully owned firearms during that campaign. In reality, “buy-back” programs are merely a more polite way of referring to the forced confiscation of legally purchased and possessed firearms Harris would like to deem illegal. Once deemed illegal, she suggests trying to soften the idea of the government seizing private property by paying the former owners a modest compensation—out of the coffers of our tax dollars—and mislabeling the scheme a “buy-back,” even though the guns were not previously sold by the government.
Let us not forget about Tim Walz. Besides agreeing with all of Harris’ unconstitutional anti-Second Amendment policies, he has also told some fibs relating to firearms.
As America’s 1st Freedom reported at the time of him becoming Harris’ running mate, “Within days of being picked as the Democratic vice presidential candidate, a video clip of Walz in 2018 surfaced. In it, Walz says, ‘We can make sure that those weapons of war, that I carried in war, is the only place where those weapons are at.’ But he didn’t ‘carry them in war.’ He resigned from the Army National Guard early—just before his unit deployed to a war zone. And the firearms he would have carried if he had been deployed would not have been the semi-automatic firearms he wants to ban; they would have been capable of firing as a full-auto.”
Harris and Walz do want to take away firearms from law-abiding Americans and it is Harris, not Trump, who is lying about it.
