Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
By Larry Keane
The forces pushing in on President Joe Biden and hastening him to quit the 2024 presidential campaign won. Now all eyes and attention are turned toward Vice President Kamala Harris to pick up the torch. She’s the presumptive Democratic nominee until things are finalized at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next month, but all signs point to her coronation as the Democratic candidate to challenge Republican nominee and former President Donald Trump in November.
Sure, there are some significant differences between President Biden and Vice President Harris. Most notably age, gender and race, but on policies – specifically the Second Amendment – Vice President Harris owns the entire failed and horrendous record she helped push along during the three and a half years of the Biden administration. And she could be even worse.
From the president deeming the entire firearm industry – all 384,000 hardworking and proud Americans employed in it – as the “enemy” in 2019, to his gun control executive actions and the creation of The White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention (headed up by Vice President Harris herself) to push gun control propaganda and all the way to repeating his call to ban the most popular-selling centerfire semiautomatic rifle in the country following a failed assassination attempt on former President Trump by a disturbed individual not two weeks ago, Vice President Harris has been in lockstep with President Biden with no daylight in between.
Gun Rights ‘Astroturf’ & ‘Façade’
It’s astonishing to think that Vice President Harris is on the cusp of being elevated to the Democratic nominee for President of the United States without ever receiving a single vote in a Democratic primary election for president. Remember, following a disastrous primary debate and national polling that placed her around 1 percent, she dropped her own 2019 candidacy to be president before the Iowa caucuses and first primary elections.
Shortly after, she worked hard to get back into President Biden’s good graces and jockey herself to be his pick for vice president by going through Everytown for Gun Safety’s Veepstakes, where she promoted her gun control bona fides and pledged to do as much as she could to restrict Second Amendment rights. Everytown jumped right back in and endorsed her for the new position as Democratic presidential nominee, as have both Giffords and Brady United.
One of the major points she made during her 2020 conversation with Everytown’s John Feinblatt and Moms Demand Action’s Shannon Watts was that the surge in Americans interested in their Second Amendment rights and lawfully purchasing historic numbers of firearms during the COVID pandemic and heights of the defund the police movement was fake. It was “astroturffed” as they called it.
Vice President Harris supported “reimagining” policing, and praised Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti for stripping $150 million from the city’s law enforcement budget. She supported the Minnesota Freedom Fund in 2020 following the violent protests in the wake of the death of George Floyd. That fund bailed out violent criminals, some of whom committed other violent crimes.
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“We’re seeing these AstroTurf protests springing up at state houses,” Watts claimed. “They’re fueled by fearmongering from the NRA and their allies. It’s really terrifying. These rallies are organized and funded by gun extremists.”
Then-U.S. Sen. Harris (D-Calif.) agreed, “It’s not grassroots. It’s a façade. It’s a front for some other agenda. It’s not real.”
If she were concerned then about millions of Americans turning to the Second Amendment to safeguard their families, homes and businesses on their own from criminal violence and looting, the vice president is really not going to like what’s happened since.
In the four-and-a-half years since 2020, more than 22.3 million Americans lawfully purchased a firearm for the first time and became brand new gun owners. That’s roughly the population of Florida and likely made up Independent and even Democratic-leaning voters who had enough of the antigun, anti-police policies the vice president supported all along the way.
Pledges MSR Bans
A major similarity between President Biden and Vice President Harris is that they both, at every opportunity that presents itself, call for the reinstatement of a new so-called “assault weapon” ban, referencing the Modern Sporting Rifle (MSR), or AR-15-style semiautomatic rifles. Just a few days ago, following the failed assassination attempt of former President Trump, President Biden repeated his call to ban America’s most popular semiautomatic rifle, of which there are more than 24 million in circulation.
“An AR-15 was used in the shooting of Donald Trump. This was the assault weapon that killed so many others, including children. It’s time to outlaw them,” President Biden told a rally audience in Las Vegas.
Just a couple of months ago, Vice President Harris made a public call to reinstate a ban on MSRs that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said had no effect on crime when one was last in place nearly 20 years ago.
“In memory of Columbine, Aurora, Uvalde and Club Q, we continue — and we all continue — to fight for an assault weapons ban, universal background checks and red-flag laws,” she stated in Denver.
President Biden, Vice President Harris, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) couldn’t even get all Democrats to support the most recent attempt to pass a national ban on MSRs when Democrats held all power in Washington, D.C., from 2021-2022.
Kitchen Sink Gun Control Agenda
The Biden-Harris ticket in 2020 was deemed “the most antigun ticket” in presidential election history. From all the executive actions, to the whole-of-government attacks on the lawful firearm industry including their “zero tolerance” policy suffocating federal firearms licensees for minor infractions, to the creation of the gun control office within The White House and so much more, they have earned that accurate label. All of that and gun control activists still were angry with the Executive Branch, often criticizing President Biden and Vice President Harris for not going further.
For her part, then-candidate Harris pleaded for acceptance from Democratic primary voters and gun control activists by pledging to take unilateral “swift action” during her first 100 days in office if Congress didn’t act on gun control. It fell on deaf ears and voters largely ignored her candidacy but it does give a glimpse of how she might still govern ahead should she make it to The West Wing as president.
Guns.com’s Chris Eger described Vice President Harris as “instrumental” in The White House’s gun control agenda, while referencing her support as the junior senator from California for a new “assault weapons” ban, mandatory gun lock storage legislation, taxpayer-funded “gun violence research,” and near-universal background checks on all firearm transfers – an idea that is impossible to implement effectively without a national firearm ownership registry. Notably, Vice President Harris would also do away with the federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) that protects the lawful and highly-regulated firearm industry from frivolous lawsuits brought by unrelated third parties for the violence, injuries and deaths caused by criminals.
During her 2019 campaign, then-Sen. Harris even suggested she’d ban MSRs by executive action. The Reload’s Stephen Gutowski also succinctly summed up what a President Harris administration could mean for the firearm industry. “In 2020, Harris ran to Biden’s left on guns. He even attacked her over one of her proposals during that campaign,” Gutowski posted on social media. “President Biden had already been running a pretty aggressive campaign on gun control. Probably the most aggressive in 30 years, with an AR ban as his premier policy proposal. Harris could push things even further left.”
The Democratic National Convention in Chicago is a little more than three weeks away. With support seemingly consolidating around Vice President Harris to be the Democratic nominee for president in November, gun control issues will continue to be a major focus and difference between herself and former President Donald Trump. That’s especially critical for the 22.3 million first-time gun buyers since the last election.
It’s imperative that all Americans who support the Second Amendment – including the 10 million hunters and recreational target shooters who aren’t registered to vote – to get out and #GUNVOTE® on Nov. 5 so they don’t risk their rights.
Larry Keane is Senior Vice President of Government and Public Affairs and General Counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the firearms industry trade association.
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