In a newly resurfaced video from 2008, then-San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris said she was “disappointed” in the Supreme Court’s decision in Heller, which struck down Washington, D.C.’s ban on handguns on Second Amendment groups, ruling that the District’s prohibition violated the individual right to keep and bear arms.
Advertisement
Harris’s statement came during a press conference held the day after the Heller decision came down, and while the Democratic candidate for president now claims to be a Second Amendment supporter, in 2008 she said she was “proud” to lead a group of District Attorneys in filing an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in defense of D.C.’s gun ban.
I was proud when, months ago, district attorneys from across the country, 17 district attorneys, joined me when I asked them to submit a brief to the United States Supreme Court outlining why this decision, the Heller decision, could impact public safety in a way that could threaten lives across this country. I was disappointed yesterday to read the majority opinion, which did not go far enough. Yes, it acknowledged that the Second Amendment is not an absolute right. Yes, it acknowledged that the Second Amendment is not without limitations. However, because of the way the language was used to uphold the Second Amendment as an individual right, the NRA and others will be attacking San Francisco with the belief that the Heller decision equips them with an argument to say we should not keep guns in locked boxes. They will use this decision to suggest we should not think about common sense regulations of guns geared to keep people safe.
You can check out the full video in the post on X from Second Amendment attorney Kostas Moros.
Just after Heller was decided, Kamala Harris gave a presser with Newsom criticizing the decision. Thankfully, Chuck had saved the link to the video in an old memo. The video only had 4,200 views on Youtube, so we assume few have seen it.
I downloaded it, incase it vanishes from… pic.twitter.com/b9XebJ3HES
— Kostas Moros (@MorosKostas) September 26, 2024
Advertisement
In the amicus brief that Harris spearheaded, the far-left DA’s defended D.C.’s gun ban, stating that “For nearly seventy years, 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, and (iii) the restrictions bear a reasonable relationship to protecting public safety and thus do not violate a personal constitutional right.”
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. Under this vague standard, a vast range of criminal laws nationwide, including laws where possession of a firearm is an element of an offense, could be subject to a new round of constitutional challenges. As detailed below, regardless of their outcome, these challenges could create substantial uncertainty in the lower courts and strain the already slim resources of the courts and the criminal justice system. Significantly,while the courts struggle to determine the scope and application of the Second Amendment, prosecutors could be hindered in their ability to enforce criminal laws they have long understood to be valid and compromised in their continuing efforts to combat gun violence in their communities.
Advertisement
Harris and her fellow D.A.’s maintained that the Second Amendment doesn’t protect an individual right to keep and bear arms. Instead, they say that right was “created” by the D.C. Court of Appeals, which held that the District’s ban on handguns violated the protections of the Second Amendment.
While Harris and the D.A’s who joined her amicus brief predicted that striking down D.C.’s handgun ban and storage mandate that required guns be kept locked up or disassembled with ammunition stored separately “could impair prosecutors’ ability to protect public safety”, the District’s violent crime and homicide rates dropped after the District’s gun ban was struck down.
D.C.’s homicide rate reached its peak of 80.6 per 100,000 people in 1991, more than a decade after the city’s handgun ban and storage law had been put in place. Like the rest of the United States, D.C. saw a decline in both overall violent crime and homicides throughout the 1990s and 2000s, but the demise of the District’s gun ban didn’t reverse those trends. In 2007, the last full year that the handgun ban was in place, D.C. had 30.8 homicides per 100,000 people. In 2013, five years after Heller, D.C.’s murder rate was 13.9 per 100,000; still about three times higher than the national average, but the lowest homicide rate recorded in the District since 1963.
Harris was wrong to claim that Heller would make cities like San Francisco and Washington, D.C. more dangerous places, but it’s her “disappointment” in the Heller decision that’s the biggest takeaway from her 2008 comments. Harris claims to be a Second Amendment supporter, but the truth is that her reading of the Second Amendment doesn’t include an individual right to keep and bear arms at all. Oh sure, special folks like prosecutors and judges might be able to keep and carry a gun for self-defense and other lawful purposes, but you and I would be out of luck.
Advertisement
Real Second Amendment supporters cheered the Heller decision. Harris held a press conference to complain about it. When Harris now claims to support the Second Amendment, she’s conveniently leaving out the fact that, in her mind and the legal briefs she filed, it never protected a right of the people to keep and bear arms outside of service in a militia.
