Kamala Harris’ Choice of Gun Triggers Safety Concerns

While Kamala Harris recently revealed that both she and her running mate were open and proud gun owners, her weapon of choice has raised eyebrows among some gun safety experts.
In response to former President Donald Trump claiming that Harris “has a plan to confiscate everybody’s gun” during the September 10 presidential debate, Harris responded: “Tim Walz and I are both gun owners. We’re not taking anybody’s guns away. So stop with the continuous lying about this stuff.”
During her interview with Oprah Winfrey a few days later, the candidate reminded viewers of the fact, and told the taken aback host: “If somebody breaks in my house [they’re] getting shot.”
However, it wasn’t until her 60 Minutes interview with CBS correspondent Bill Whitaker that Harris revealed the type of gun she owns. “I have a Glock, and—I’ve had it for quite some time,” Harris said, adding that she had fired the weapon “at a shooting range.”
The Austrian-manufactured, semiautomatic is a popular weapon in California, where Harris served as both Attorney General and state senator, and the gun of choice for American law enforcement.
However, some have taken issue both with Harris’s firearm preference, as well as her apparent hypocrisy when it comes to bearing arms.
Everytown, a gun violence prevention organization which endorsed Harris’s candidacy only days after President Biden’s withdrawal from the race, has issued warnings that the Glock is an easily modifiable weapon. Everytown is currently suing Glock, alongside the city of Chicago, for “manufacturing semiautomatic pistols in such a way that they can be easily converted into illegal machine guns in a matter of minutes.”
As pointed out by Shooting News Weekly, the Glock was also excluded from California’s handgun roster, and is currently restricted for purchase in the state.
While some older models of the Glock have been approved for citizens, California’s handgun roster currently considers Glocks released after 2010, as well as those manufactured in the U.S. unsafe weapons, as they do not feature mandatory safety features. These include a magazine disconnect mechanism, a chamber load indicator, as well as having undergone a “drop safety” test.
Although Harris may qualify for the exemptions granted to law enforcement and other high-ranking officials, her gun ownership has led to accusations of hypocrisy, given her previous attempt to restrict handgun sales in the state.
Newsweek has contacted the Harris campaign for comment.
According to gun-focused news site, The Reload, Harris supported a 2005 measure that would have restricted handgun ownership in California, while serving as San Francisco district attorney.
Proposition H, which was later struck down in court, would have prohibited San Francisco residents from buying, selling or owning handguns, unless required for professional purposes such as law enforcement.
In 2007, Harris also signed an Amici Curiae Brief (someone outside a court case but informing it), which supported the position that the Second Amendment “does not provide a private right to keep and bear arm,” and that this provided legal basis for the banning of handguns.
Newsweek spoke with Mark Oliva of the Firearm Industry Trade Association, about Harris’s gun ownership.
Citing the above cases, Mark Oliva said: “It is curious that both Vice President Harris and Governor Walz have made such a public push for their own firearm ownership given their support for restrictive and unconstitutional gun control proposals.”
However, Oliva said that he welcomed the vice president’s openness about her gun ownership, a move which helps “shatter previous misconceptions about who gun owners are.”
“The fastest growing demographic of today’s gun owner is Black women,” Oliva said. “The fact is, today’s gun owner looks like the rest of America because they are the rest of America. It might be that Vice President Harris and Governor Walz are just now realizing this.”
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