Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris is an anti-gun extremist. A detailed accounting and rebuttal of her preferred gun-control policies could fill this entire magazine. However, such an exhaustive examination would be redundant. That’s because the vice president has endorsed the gun-control endgame—a world where Americans don’t have an individual right to keep and bear arms under the law and the federal government confiscates guns.
The regime media has been working overtime to twist, hide and outright distort Harris’ deeply unpopular record on a host of issues. Try as they might, there is no legitimate way to hide her contempt for the Second Amendment. Harris’ position, that Americans do not have a constitutionally protected individual right to keep and bear arms, is available for all to read in a brief with her name on it submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In 2008, the Supreme Court decided the case District of Columbia v. Heller. The case concerned a challenge to the Washington, D.C., total ban on handgun ownership. The ban was extreme. District of Columbia residents were even prohibited from keeping a handgun for self-defense within their own homes. In overturning the ban, the Court ruled 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 determined state and local governments may not infringe upon the right. The Court again affirmed the individual Second Amendment right in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022), which made clear the right to bear a firearm for self-defense extends outside the home.
In 2008, Harris was the district attorney of San Francisco. In this capacity, she endorsed an amicus curiae brief of district attorneys supporting the District of Columbia and its handgun ban in the Heller case.
To underscore Harris’ lead role in this brief, 18 district attorneys signed onto the document; however, Harris was one of only two district attorneys whose name appeared on the cover page. A Jan.11, 2008, press release from the San Francisco District Attorney’s office noted that Harris was one of two district attorneys “leading” this effort to back D.C.’s unconstitutional gun ban. The release also boasted, “In 2007, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom signed into law a package of strict anti-gun legislation co-authored by District Attorney Harris that will make San Francisco the U.S. city with the nation’s toughest gun laws.” A 2008 article from San Franciso legal publication Daily Journal, which the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office reposted on their own website, repeatedly described the district attorney brief as “the Harris brief.”
Advocating against the individual right to keep and bear arms, the brief argued that 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, and (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 a pre-existing 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’ brief reiterated that the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms should not be incorporated to the states through the 14th Amendment. Had this thinking been adopted, state and local governments would be empowered to curtail or even extinguish Second Amendment rights entirely. State and local governments would have been able to bar their residents from owning any firearms whatsoever.
Not only is Harris wrong on the law, but her position is also extreme.
Outside of the political class in San Francisco or Washington, D.C., most Americans have long understood that the Second Amendment protects an individual right.
Just a month after Harris and her anti-Second Amendment allies filed their failed brief in Heller, and before the Supreme Court handed down its decision, a USA Today/Gallup poll asked Americans “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?” A massive 73% of those polled responded that the Second Amendment protects the rights of Americans to own guns, with a miniscule 20% favoring the collective interpretation. More recently, a February 2018 Economist/YouGov poll found a paltry 21% of respondents favored repealing the Second Amendment.
As for a handgun ban—the specific measure at issue in Heller and that Harris advocated the Supreme Court uphold—Americans reject the policy in overwhelming numbers.
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% opposed such a measure. In 2023, 73% opposed a handgun ban.
Taken alone, Harris’ radical views on the Second Amendment should disqualify her from the presidency. However, this position coupled with her plans to destroy the U.S. Supreme Court to advance her and her allies’ preferred policy outcomes make her truly dangerous.
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, N.H., 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.”
In 2020, New York Times reporter Alexander Burns stated that Harris told him she was interested in packing the Supreme Court. Burns remarked, “Harris told me in an interview actually that she was absolutely open to doing that …”
On July 29, lame-duck President Joe Biden issued a plan to “reform” the Supreme Court. The scheme would impose term limits for Supreme Court justices and diminish the Court’s independence. By marvelous coincidence, the first three justices impacted by the term-limit ploy would just so happen to be pro-Second Amendment Republican appointees. Harris issued a statement backing the cynical plot.
Harris has also repeatedly advocated for gun confiscation.
During her failed 2020 presidential campaign, Harris told reporters at an event in New Hampshire in September 2019 that confiscation of commonly owned semi-automatic firearms was “a good idea.” Expanding upon her support for a mandatory “buyback” 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.”
Harris reiterated her support for gun confiscation on the Sept. 16, 2019, episode of “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.” An audience member asked the candidate, “Do you believe in the mandatory buyback of quote-unquote assault weapons and whether or not you do, how does that idea not fundamentally go against the Second Amendment?”
Harris responded, “I do believe that we need to do buybacks.” She added, “A buyback program is a good idea. Now we need to do it the right way.”
Signifying her devotion to gun confiscation, Harris repeated her calls for a “mandatory buyback program” at an Oct. 3, 2019, MSNBC gun control forum and during a November 2019 NBC Nightly News interview.
Further, Harris appears to have carried this position into the vice president’s office. During an Oct. 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.”
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 “buyback” confiscation scheme where gun owners were required to turn their property over to the government for a set price.
Perhaps understanding that this is an intolerable position for a general election campaign, following Harris’ coronation as the Democratic candidate for president, her staffers sought to distance the anti-gun candidate from gun confiscation. Citing campaign officials, The New York Times reported that Harris “echoed Mr. Biden’s call for banning assault weapons but not a requirement to sell them to the federal government.”
Harris hasn’t given Americans any reason to believe she’s had a change of heart, and no gun owner who hopes to keep their rights and property can afford to offer her the benefit of the doubt. Moreover, “echo[ing]” Biden’s position on banning so-called “assault weapons” is little better.
Biden has made clear he desires far-broader restrictions than Bill Clinton’s 1994 gun ban that would even prohibit common handguns. In 2019, the Seattle Times reported that while attending a private campaign event, Biden stated, “Why should we allow people to have military-style weapons including pistols with 9 mm bullets and can hold 10 or more rounds?”
Given the severity of the threat, NRA members and other gun-rights activists must do all they can 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.
