Where the Harris/Walz Ticket Stands on the Second Amendment

In July, I wrote about the decision by the Republican Party to remove all Second Amendment protections from their official party platform leading up to the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. Soon after, the Democrats infamously supplanted President Joe Biden with Vice President Kamala Harris at the top of their ticket, and Minnesota governor Tim Walz was selected as Harris’s running mate. With only weeks left before what promises to be a razor-thin presidential contest, let us take a look at both Harris and Walz’s history and current views on gun ownership and the Second Amendment.

The GOP scrapping 2A protections from their platform may have been due to political expediency rather than a legitimate change in preferred policy. However, former president Trump, the Republican Party standard-bearer, did have a contentious relationship with the Second Amendment during his first term in office. Both Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, too, have attempted to pivot towards the center on guns in recent weeks, presumably for the same reason, as the vast majority of swing state polls currently have the contest well within the margin of error.

Vice President Harris angered supporters, and even surprised television personality and Democratic donor Oprah Winfrey, when she talked about owning a Glock handgun. “If somebody breaks into my house, they’re getting shot,” she told Oprah. “Probably should not have said that, but my staff will deal with that later.” Harris claimed she has owned a pistol since her time as a prosecutor in California. “I am a gun owner, and I own a gun for probably the reason a lot of people do—for personal safety,” Harris told reporters after a campaign event during her brief 2019 presidential run. “I was a career prosecutor.”

Harris the politician, over the course of her decades-long career in public service, has taken a far more hostile position towards the Second Amendment than Harris the private citizen. She joined fellow liberal presidential candidates such as Beto O’Rourke (D-TX) and Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) in endorsing a mandatory gun buyback scheme in 2019. “We have to have a buyback program, and I support a mandatory gun buyback program,” she said. “It’s got to be smart, we got to do it the right way. But there are 5 million [assault weapons] at least, some estimate as many as 10 million, and we’re going to have to have smart public policy that’s about taking those off the streets, but doing it the right way.”

The Biden/Harris administration’s position from day one has been to reinstate the 1994 so-called assault weapons ban that then-Senator Biden championed. The ban would outlaw over 44 million privately owned AR-15-style rifles and several million additional Kalashnikov-style and other semi-automatic rifles, as well as impose universal background checks and red flag laws. Harris has stated repeatedly in recent interviews that there is no daylight between her policies and those of her boss. The vice president said there is “not a thing” she would have done differently than Joe Biden during an October 8 appearance on The View.

During her time in regional California politics, Kamala Harris took even more radically unconstitutional positions on gun ownership. “Just because you legally possess a gun in the sanctity of your locked home doesn’t mean that we’re not going to walk into that home and check to see if you’re being responsible,” said Harris, who was a district attorney at the time, at a 2007 presser.

Minnesota governor Tim Walz has attempted to appeal to swing voters on gun issues as well in recent weeks. Walz appeared in a pheasant hunting–related photo op where the governor failed to bag any birds but did struggle to load his $2,000+ Beretta shotgun in an embarrassing display for the 24-year military veteran. Walz campaigned as a moderate on guns while representing Minnesota’s First Congressional District, which leaned conservative at the time, but took a hard left turn after becoming governor. “When I first started in Congress, I had an A rating from the NRA. I have straight Fs now, I sleep just fine at night,” Walz said last year during his State of the State address.

Walz has made advancing anti-gun policy a hallmark of his gubernatorial administration. “The time for thoughts and prayers is long gone, what we need is action and we need it now,” Walz said during his 2023 State of the State speech. “We all know damn well that weapons of war have no place in our schools, in our churches, in our banks, or anywhere people want to live in peace.”

American gun ownership has soared in recent years, and not just among traditional demographics. In 2021, following the 2020 summer of race riots and a contentious presidential election, the number of African Americans and Hispanic Americans purchasing guns rose by 44 percent and 40 percent, respectively, and 33 percent of first-time gun buyers were women. State legislatures and governors have bolstered the Second Amendment rights of their citizens across the country. Residents of 28 states, over half of the American population, can now carry a handgun without a state-issued license.

Between recent Second Amendment legal victories, pro-gun legislation at the state level, and the all-American love of all things related to firearms, there is no doubt in my mind that the Second Amendment will survive, and perhaps even be strengthened, despite the actions of constitutionally hostile Democrats and weak-kneed Republicans at the federal level.