Though Kamala Harris claims to be a gun owner herself and has declared on the campaign trail that she’s not “going to take everyone’s guns away”, she’s yet to offer any explanation about when or if her views on the right to keep and bear arms have changed since her days as San Francisco’s District Attorney, when she backed a referendum banning handguns that required existing owners to hand them in to police and co-authored an amicus brief calling on the Supreme Court to reject an individual rights interpretation of the Second Amendment.
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Now the Free Beacon has unearthed more comments from Harris during her tenure as D.A. that suggests she was in favor of an outright ban on gun possession, though she didn’t believe it was all that feasible.
Harris, who was serving as district attorney of San Francisco at the time, spoke at a 2006 event hosted by the Commonwealth Club of California, where the moderator asked whether gun ownership should be banned.
“Is there any justification for anyone to carry a gun, except for law enforcement? And why not ban them completely in the city?” asked moderator Mary Cranston.
“Yeah, and it would be great to end world hunger and a couple of other things, too,” said Harris. “Are we going to really be able to get rid of people owning and possessing guns? I don’t know.”
Harris—who now says on the campaign trail that she owns a gun for self-protection—didn’t offer a justification for personal gun ownership in the recording. She said a total gun ban was unlikely in the short term because “the Constitution of the United States says that we do have a right to legally possess firearms.” She also didn’t rule out a ban in the future.
“I don’t think we’re anywhere close to that, right now,” said Harris. “I would not put all my effort into that being the solution, because I think it’s a long way off.”
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Harris didn’t say anything about owning a Glock in her comments to the Commonwealth Club of California, even though her campaign now says she purchased a handgun when she was a prosecutor. She also said nothing that would suggest she believed the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms, which makes sense given that in 2007 she advocated for a collective rights interpretation ahead of the Supreme Court’s decision in Heller striking down Washington, D.C.’s handgun ban as a violation of the Second Amendment.
Instead, Harris suggested that she’d be all in favor of a complete ban on firearms, even if she didn’t think it was particularly feasible.
Harris maintains that though her positions may have changed over the years her values have remained the same, and her comments to the Commonwealth Club show her taking a pragmatic stance on gun control policies while clinging to an ideology treating an end to gun ownership as a positive good.
As San Francisco’s D.A., advocated for handgun bans and a collective rights view of the Second Amendment, but as president she’d be in a much better position to put those policies into place. Many Senate Democrats and those running for a seat in the upper chamber have said they’d nuke the filibuster and allow for bills to pass with just 51 votes, and Harris could appoint one or more Supreme Court justices if she wins election in less than two weeks. If progressives control SCOTUS, we can expect the Heller, McDonald, and Bruen decisions to be overturned, with the collective rights view that Harris pushed enshrined as the law of the land as a result.
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In 2006 Harris said a complete ban on gun ownership was a “long way off”. It’s scary to think how much closer we are to that today, at least if Harris is victorious in her presidential campaign.
