Kamala Harris Says She Owns a Handgun—Despite Fighting To Ban Others From Doing the Same
When Vice President Kamala Harris appeared in conversation with Oprah Winfrey last month, she dropped a tidbit that may have come as a surprise. “If somebody breaks in my house,” she said, “they’re getting shot.”
It was, or at least it should have been, one of the more relatable things she’s ever said. Whatever your politics—Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Jill Stein groupie, etc.—the right to protect your life and your family when threatened with potentially deadly aggression is something so basic as to transcend partisanship.
It’s a bit less relatable, however, when considering Harris’ past advocacy against other people accessing the same type of protection she has.
She provided more specifics during her recent 60 Minutes interview. “I have a Glock, and I’ve had it for quite some time,” she said. “My background is in law enforcement. And, so there you go.”
That admission should hardly be a bomb drop. But it’s difficult to reconcile with her support, as San Francisco District Attorney, for Proposition H, which banned the city’s residents from merely possessing (as well as manufacturing or selling) handguns. The ordinance passed in 2005, and a California appeals court threw it out three years later.
Harris hasn’t said exactly how long she’s owned her firearm. Yet if it’s been for “quite some time,” as she said, then one can reasonably assume that her owning a gun overlapped with her view that the state should curtail others from doing the same. But the next detail she provided—that she was in law enforcement—possibly provides some context for her position, at least attitudinally, as Proposition H provided gun ownership exemptions for law enforcement, military, and security guards.
Not long after, Harris would also go on to file a brief in District of Columbia v. Heller, the landmark Supreme C
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