Harris declared that she is a gun owner and 'if somebody breaks into my house, they’re getting shot'
Kamala Harris: Walz and I are both gun owners, we’re not taking anyone’s guns away
Vice President Kamala Harris defends her position on the Affordable Care Act and Second Amendment rights during the ABC News Presidential Debate. (Courtesy: ABC News)
The reinvention of Vice President Kamala Harris in this election has been a thing to behold. In politics, candidates often reconstruct their records to secure votes, but Harris appears to have constructed an entirely mythical being.
Once ranked to the left of socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and viewed as among the most liberal members of the Senate, Harris has sought to convince the public that she is actually a frack-loving, gun-toting, border-defending moderate.
This last week, Harris sounded like she has hired Neo from "The Matrix" as her new campaign manager. When asked, "What do you need, besides a miracle?" Neo replied "Guns. Lots of Guns."
Bill Whitaker interviewed Vice President Kamala Harris on an episode of "60 Minutes" that aired Monday night. (Screenshots/CBS News)
Recently, that remake was on full display during a softball interview with Oprah, who has endorsed Harris. The vice president declared that she is a gun owner and "if somebody breaks into my house, they’re getting shot."
She repeated the claim in a CBS "60 Minutes" interview and noted that she has fired the gun at a pistol range. The gun is reportedly a semiautomatic Glock handgun. Many Glocks are semiautomatics that use 9mm ammunition.
When CBS’s Bill Whitaker expressed shock at her gun-toting persona on the campaign trail, he asked if she actually fired it. Harris then did her best Rooster Cogburn, who noted, "Well a gun that ain’t loaded, ain’t much good for nuthin." Harris said that she had, of course, fired the gun in her trips to the firing range.
Harris’s pledge to gun down intruders stands in stark contrast to her opposition to stand your ground laws.
When she was the San Fransisco district attorney, Harris was one of the signatories on the district attorneys’ amicus brief in District of Columbia v. Heller – in support the handgun ban. The Supreme Court rejected the position of Harris and her fellow Democratic DAs and held that there is an individual right to bear arms under the Second Amendment.
Harris’ true grit has delighted activists who are trying to lure male voters back to the Democratic Party. It may not be as thrilling to some in the Biden-Harris administration, including President Biden.
As we have previously discussed, Biden and other Democrats have repeatedly denounced semiautomatics and some have suggested that, with a change in the Supreme Court, they might be banned. While the administration has repeatedly called for a ban on AR-15s, the most popular weapon in America, Biden has suggested in the past that he might seek to ban 9mm weapons.
In reference to guns that use 9mm ammunition, Biden declared, "There’s simply no rational basis for it in terms of thinking about self-protection."
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It is a call that has been echoed in Canada, where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that his government is introducing legislation to "implement a national freeze on handgun ownership." He said Canadians would no longer be able "to buy, sell, transfer or import handguns anywhere in Canada," adding that "there is no reason anyone in Canada should need guns in their everyday lives."
While the White House subsequently tried to walk back his comments, Biden saying there’s "no rational basis" to own 9mms makes the new Harris look... well... irrational.
Both Biden and Harris have made sweeping, unsupportable statements about guns and constitutional protections. For example, despite being repeatedly corrected, Biden continues to repeat the same false statements about bans on weapons when the Second Amendment was ratified.
Likewise, in support of the ban on AR-15s, Harris declared: "Do you know what an assault weapon is? It was designed for a specific purpose, to kill a lot of human beings quickly. An assault weapon is a weapon of war, with no place, no place in a civil society."
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Yet, courts likely would press a Harris administration on why it is seeking to ban this model when other higher-caliber weapons are sold. AR-15s can handle a variety of calibers. However, they are no more powerful than other semi-automatic rifles of the same caliber and actually have a lower caliber than some commonly sold weapons which use .30-06, .308 and .300 ammunition; many of these guns fire at the same – or near the same rate – as the AR-15. None of these weapons are classified as actual military "assault weapons," and most civilians cannot own an automatic weapon.
As discussed earlier, Biden showed the same disconnect as Harris between the factual and the rhetorical basis for some gun-control measures. He condemned "high-caliber weapons" like 9mm handguns and said "a .22-caliber bullet will lodge in the lung, and we can probably get it out – may be able to get it and save the life. A 9mm bullet blows the lung out of the body."
Biden has not made any comment on Harris promising to blow away anyone coming into her house with her own Glock.
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Yet, before condemning Harris for her an implied threat to "blow lungs out of bodies," Biden should again check both the constitutional and practical statements about handguns.
Gun experts mocked the notion that 9mm rounds blow organs out of bodies, but 9mm ammunition is the most popular handgun caliber in the U.S., with more than half of all handguns produced in 2019 using that round, according to Shooting Industry magazine. If Biden pushed a ban, he would target more than 40% of all pistols produced in the U.S., including many Glocks.
Again, in fairness to Harris, she is not the first politician to reinvent herself on the campaign trail. For now, Harris wants to be clear that "I have a Glock, and I’ve had it for quite some time." For critics, the reload is a bit much given her record. Yet, in a close election, many activists want voters in states like Pennsylvania to know that Harris is the virtual Jed Clampett of the Beverly Hills set. Indeed, you get the impression that she would use her Glock to frack, if only she could.
While 9mm’s have been vilified by the Biden-Harris administration, it just happens to be one of the most popular guns in the United States... and Harris wants people to know that she has one and knows how to use it.
As a politician reinventing herself in a higher-caliber image, she chose wisely. Indeed, other politicians may want to take heed and listen to Deputy Marshall Sam Gerard in "U.S. Marshals": "Get yourself a Glock, and get rid of the nickel-plated sissy-pistol."
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Jonathan Turley is a Fox News Media contributor and the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of "The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage" (Simon & Schuster, June 18, 2024).
