Originally published in the Houston Courant.
Kamala Harris is the gun owner’s worst nightmare. Unlike others who merely have an anti-gun philosophy and voting record, she has shown the extremes that she will use in an executive position in order to disarm Americans. Gun owners should be terrified of the possibility of her using those extremes in the White House.
Instead of merely wanting to limit our Second Amendment rights, Kamala Harris simply doesn’t believe in those rights.
In 2008, she used her position as San Francisco District Attorney to sign onto an amicus brief in the Heller case, dealing with whether the D.C. ban on handguns was Constitutional. Harris’ brief argued that the ban did not violate the Constitution because “the Second Amendment provides only a militia-related right to keep and bear arms.”
Thankfully, the Supreme Court did not find this a winning argument in Heller. But Harris never recanted her position. She continues to show that she does not believe that you and I have an individual right to keep and bear arms.
When it comes to the policies that Kamala Harris would champion as Vice President, she makes Elizabeth Warren look soft on gun control.
While neither of these politicians wants you and me to own AR-15’s or other semi-automatic firearms that they call “assault weapons,” Warren only supports heavy regulation and a voluntary buyback program for these firearms. Harris, meanwhile, supports a mandatory buyback program. In her own words, a semiautomatic firearm is “a weapon of war, which therefore has no place on the streets of a civil society.”
Harris also supports a litany of gun control, including federally mandated red flag laws, universal background checks, and raising the minimum age for gun purchases.
And she wants to ban states from having “stand-your-ground” laws, severely limiting our ability to use our firearms if needed to defend ourselves—even in our own homes.
These policies are similar to measures that she supported during her tenure as California’s Attorney General. In short, she would love to “Californize” our entire nation’s laws—and then some.
And if the next Congress doesn’t act to pass such “comprehensive gun reform” in its first 100 days, Harris supports using executive action to make it happen. Her history shows that she would not adhere to Constitutional limits on executive power. She would go all out to criminalize the American norms of keeping and bearing arms.
Kamala Harris as Vice President would be the gun owner’s worst nightmare—but it could also be the gun owner’s best call to action.
We’ve already seen how a radical anti-gunner can inspire Americans to stand fiercely for their right to keep and bear arms.
After Obama was elected in 2008, gun and ammo sales skyrocketed because Americans were afraid of losing their ability to purchase those items. And after Virginia turned blue in the 2018 General Election, Virginians rose up, established Second Amendment Sanctuary Counties, and ousted liberal local government officials.
Let’s hope that American gun owners don’t wait until after the election to take a stand. If we delay action until a Joe Biden-Kamala Harris reign has begun, we will see radical gun control measures like never before. And we’ll be thrust into a weak defensive position for at least four years—if not much longer.
Instead, gun owners need to make sure Kamala Harris never sees the inside of the White House.
