Sam Cabral
BBC News, Washington
Kamala Harris is leaning into a little-known aspect of her biography – the fact that she is a gun owner – to stake out ground on the issue of firearms control.
The Democratic presidential nominee supports universal background checks, so-called “red flag” laws and a ban on assault weapons, but critics are honing in on her past support for a mandatory buyback of semi-automatic rifles.
After Donald Trump claimed during their Tuesday debate she would “confiscate everybody’s gun” if elected, Harris replied that both she and running mate Tim Walz own guns.
“We’re not taking anyone’s guns away, so stop with the continuous lying about this stuff,” she said.
Gun control remains among the most contentious issues in American politics but has largely taken a backseat to other policy areas this election.
The question raised during Tuesday’s debate over where exactly Harris stands was the first time the issue has even come up in a 2024 debate.
Moderator Linsey Davis noted that, among other shifting policy positions, Harris no longer backs a programme that would force gun owners to hand over their AR-15s and other assault-style weapons to the government.
Harris reiterated her stance at a rally on Thursday in North Carolina. “We who believe in the freedom to live safe from gun violence will finally pass an assault weapons ban, universal background checks, and red flag laws”.
Gun buybacks
Gun buyback proposals gained steam during the 2020 Democratic presidential primary race, first endorsed by Eric Swalwell and earning support from Harris, Cory Booker, Bernie Sanders and – most memorably – Beto O’Rourke.
“We have to have a buyback programme, and I support a mandatory gun buyback programme,” Harris said in October 2019.
“It’s got to be smart, we got to do it the right way. But there are five 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.”
Buyback initiatives have taken place in cities across the US since at least the 1970s, though research indicates, external that they are often very expensive and not effective as a standalone strategy to curb gun violence.
Advocates, however, point to the impact of two mandatory buybacks in Australia following the deadliest mass shooting on its soil in 1996. The country has largely avoided mass firearm violence since that incident.
In making her own case for buybacks as part of a broader effort to rein in gun violence, Harris explained back in 2019: “I am a gun owner, and I own a gun for probably the reason a lot of people do – for personal safety. I was a career prosecutor.”
She argued US politicians were offering American voters “a false choice” between protecting gun rights under the Second Amendment and taking guns away.
“It’s a false choice that is borne out of a lack of courage from leaders who must recognise and agree that there are some practical solutions to what is a clear problem in our country,” she said.
Why are these Americans turning in (some of) their guns?
Harris’s experience
Harris began her career as the district attorney – or the top prosecutor – in Alameda County and then for the city of San Francisco. She also served from 2011 to 2017 as California’s attorney general, the top law enforcement job in the state.
William Lockyer, a fellow Democrat who served as California AG from 1999 to 2007, told the BBC that it was not uncommon for a local or state-level prosecutor to own a gun, even though the role comes with its own security team.
“I don’t know about Kamala’s experience as AG, but I received a threat on average every day during my eight years,” he said.
Harris not directly explain on Tuesday either why she got a weapon or why she no longer supports the idea of a mandatory gun buyback by the federal government.
The Harris campaign did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment.
It is rare for elected officials in the party to speak openly about their experience as gun owners.
Walz the hunter
Harris’s vice-presidential nominee, Tim Walz, is a notable exception.
Walz, from Nebraska, grew up hunting during summer breaks and trained with firearms over the more than two decades he spent as a National Guardsman.
At the start of his political career, he held an A rating from the National Rifle Association and was often spotted wearing an NRA ballcap.
But Walz changed tack amid a series of deadly shootings during the 2010s, including at schools in Sandy Hook, Connecticut and Parkland, Florida.
He held an F rating by the time he left Congress and, as Minnesota governor, he signed expansions of background checks and other restrictions into law.
“I know guns,” he said at the Democratic National Convention last month.
“I’m a veteran. I’m a hunter. I was a better shot than most Republicans in Congress and I have the trophies to prove it. But I’m also a dad.
“I believe in the Second Amendment, but I also believe that our first responsibility is to keep our kids safe.”
On the Republican side, Trump has referred to himself as ”the best friend gun owners have ever had in the White House”.
Speaking to NRA members in February, he bragged that he “did nothing” despite pressure to take action after shootings and pledged “no one will lay a finger on your firearms” if he is re-elected.
Trump’s record
As a New York resident, Donald Trump owned three licenced firearms, two of which he surrendered in 2023 following his arrest on 34 counts of falsifying business records.
The third weapon is said to have been legally transferred to Florida, the state where he now lives.
His criminal conviction in New York required that his gun licence there be revoked.
Convicted criminals are barred under federal law from owning guns or ammunition, but authorities in Republican-led Florida have expressed no interest in confiscating his weapon.
Trump once claimed in an interview that he “always” carried a gun. Under Florida law, he can carry his firearm concealed and does not need a permit.
The Trump campaign has also said his support for gun rights was unshaken by the attempt on his life this July, when a 20-year-old armed with his father’s AR-style rifle shot at least eight rounds in his direction and grazed his right ear with a bullet.
JD Vance, his running mate and a former Marine, has described shooting guns from an early age and was lauded earlier this year for his “perfect voting record” on protecting the Second Amendment by the pro-gun group, Gun Owners of America.
