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Kamala Harris has a Glock — and she wants you to know it.
In her “60 Minutes” interview, Harris laughed talking about firing her gun at a shooting range. This followed her earlier warning on an Oprah Winfrey special that intruders are “getting shot” if they enter her home. The campaign has been eager to share these clips, too: On Tuesday, staffers quickly remixed her latest gun remarks over a track by rapper Key Glock and shared the video on TikTok. Meanwhile, Tim Walz said in his debate that he’d keep a shotgun in his car while working as a football coach so that he could hunt pheasants post-practice.
While not the most mentioned subject (and one that is sometimes brought up by interviewers or moderators first) the Harris-Walz ticket has emphasized their gun ownership during this campaign — even as they confidently call for new restrictions on firearms. Their rhetoric on the topic points to the changing politics of the issue in both parties this cycle.
As conservatives point out whenever Harris paints herself as a gun-loving American, the vice president previously discussed mandatory buybacks of assault rifles in her 2019 run — today, Harris’ campaign has said she wouldn’t push such an initiative. In 2005, meanwhile, she supported a ballot measure in San Francisco that would ban pistols. Her campaign declined to comment on the record on whether that remains her stance today, though a 2008 Supreme Court decision overturning a similar ban in Washington, DC largely ended policy conversations around the idea.
This time around, Harris has emphasized her support for gun rights and directly told owners she won’t take guns away, even as she talks about new laws in response to crime and mass shootings. She’s expressed support for so-called red flag laws, universal background checks, and reinstating the assault weapons ban.
“We’re very happy with her positions and where she is now,” Emma Brown, the executive director of gun safety group Giffords, told Semafor. “We understand that folks’ positions and nuances of those positions will shift slightly over time. I will say she’s been tremendously consistent in recognizing the seriousness of this issue, recognizing that the gun lobby has for far too long stood in the way of progress. And she’s been consistent on closing loopholes that allow dangerous people to get access to guns.”
But the landscape has changed on the other side as well. There hasn’t been a barrage of pro-gun messaging and some observers see Trump, a mostly reliable Second Amendment advocate, as more muted on the topic compared to prior campaigns. The new Republican platform approved at the convention made little mention of it. On the airwaves, the campaign has focused its attention on inflation, the economy, and lately transgender issues — guns aren’t even a blip on the radar, aside from occasionally highlighting Harris’ shifts on the topic as part of a broader push to paint her as a “radical left” lawmaker.
That’s not to say it never comes up: Trump campaign aides regularly pull out Harris’ comments on guns to push back on her through social media. On the campaign trail, Trump has repeatedly argued that Harris wants to take everyone’s guns away. And the former president is a frequent speaker at the National Rifle Association — he’ll be giving the keynote speech at the organization’s “Defend the 2nd Amendment” event in Georgia later this month. The NRA’s legislative action arm told Semafor it will be Trump’s tenth time speaking there, and his third time this calendar year.
“We know where he stands on the Second Amendment,” Jennifer Briemann, the deputy executive director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action, told Semafor. “We know he is a strong supporter. He was the strongest Second Amendment president in recent history.”
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Observers see competing electoral calculations at play: Democrats clearly still see a class of gun owners who are gettable with the right reassurance and have been making a play to hold down Trump margins in rural areas. Republicans, who have consolidated hardcore gun rights activists, seem more worried about turning off groups like suburban women and prefer playing up other issues this cycle.
“It strikes me as a strategy to try and not win over, necessarily, gun owners who vote on gun policy, but people who maybe own guns or want to own guns, and they have other reasons they would vote for Harris, but are a little bit concerned about this,” Stephen Gutowski, founder of gun newsletter The Reload, said. “Trump, on the other hand, maybe the Pennsylvania suburban mom agrees with him on the economy and inflation and grocery prices, but doesn’t like guns. He doesn’t want to upset that [person].”
The quieter messaging on the Republican side also likely has to do with the changing landscape around outside gun advocate groups. In 2016, the NRA spent over $30 million backing Trump, a sum that was considered especially important in an election where he was badly outspent. It’s since been roiled by infighting and corruption allegations. The group’s legislative arm still says it’s pulling out all the stops in this election — targeting high propensity voters with similar views as NRA members via direct mail, digital ad targeting, text messaging, door-to-door canvassing, and more — but it’s unlikely that those stops will reach its 2016 levels.
“Just like in past election cycles, we will be spending millions of dollars in this election cycle as well to reach our members,” Briemann said. “I think our members are less concerned about the amount of money we spend and more on our ability to deliver victory and outcome in November, and that’s what we’re focused on doing.”
Some in Trump’s orbit also argue that convincing gun rights supporters that Democrats aren’t on their side is of limited use. The relevant voters sorted themselves into red and blue camps on this issue long ago and Harris’ liberal record makes her a uniquely poor messenger. “We’re not at risk of losing” any Second Amendment voters, one person close to the campaign said.
Shelby’s view
In some ways, Harris is just returning to where Democrats were in the pre-Trump era. Democrats have often tried to play up their gun ownership: Back in 2013, Joe Biden offered some advice on what the best home defense weapon was, suggesting customers choose a shotgun over an AR-style rifle. That same year, the White House released photos of then-President Barack Obama skeet shooting at Camp David.
But Harris, as Gutowski pointed out, has a narrative that could be more enticing than some more recent attempts by Democrats to connect with gun owners. While many Democrats emphasize support for guns from a hunting perspective, Harris has explicitly said her gun ownership is based in self defense.
“That is much closer to the kind of gun most Americans who own guns have, and it’s also closer to the reason that people say they own firearms,” he told me.
It’s unclear how many voters are up for grabs on this issue in either direction, and Harris’ more liberal positions seem to put a hard ceiling on how far any inroads could go. But with an election that could be the closest in decades, any marginal shift could be the one that makes all the difference.
Notable
- Kamala Harris has also focused on gun-related violence this campaign cycle, with survivors sharing their story on the final night of the DNC back in August.
- Turning Point USA is targeting hunters as it works to help the Trump campaign turn out the vote, ABC News recently reported.
- One reason to talk to gun owners this cycle: There are a lot more of them. As CNN reported last year, there was a major surge of first-time buyers — especially women — during the pandemic.