In her first solo TV interview of the election cycle, Vice President Kamala Harris told a visibly shocked Oprah Winfrey on Thursday that an intruder who breaks into her home would be “getting shot, sorry.”
With a laugh, she followed up: “I probably shouldn’t have said that. My staff will deal with it later.”
“I’m in favor of the Second Amendment, and I’m in favor of assault weapons bans, universal background checks, and red flag laws,” Harris said on Thursday at the “Unite for America” event. “These are just common sense.”
Harris was responding to a question from Oprah about her personal gun ownership, which the Democratic nominee casually revealed, to the surprise of many viewers, during the Sept. 10 debate with former President Donald Trump.
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaks as she joins Oprah Winfrey at Oprah’s Unite for America Live Streaming event Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024 in Farmington Hills, Mich.
AP Photo/Paul Sancya
“Here’s my point, Oprah. I’m not trying to take everyone’s guns away,” Harris said Thursday, repeating a version of what she said on the debate stage.
On that stage, in response to Trump’s claim that his opponent “wants to confiscate your guns,” the Democratic nominee fired back: “Tim Walz and I are both gun owners. We’re not taking anybody’s guns away, so stop with the constant lying about this.”
Newsweek has repeatedly reached out to the Harris campaign with detailed questions about her gun ownership, including the type of firearm she owns and whether she had a concealed-carry license in California, where she owns a home. As a district attorney and then attorney general of that state, it’s unclear whether she would have needed to obtain such a permit.
The campaign has not responded to those inquiries.
The acknowledgment that both candidates on the Democratic ticket own guns reflects a broader campaign strategy to appeal to moderate and even right-leaning voters who may be wary of a second Trump term but still have reservations about the Democrats‘ positions on hot-button issues like gun control.
In a new interview with Wired, Harris expanded, slightly, on her position.
“Tim Walz and I are both gun owners,” Harris told the magazine for a piece published Friday.
“We will not take anyone’s guns away. But we also need reasonable gun safety laws. I believe we need an assault weapons ban, universal background checks, and red flag laws. We can support the Second Amendment, as I do, while also agreeing on the need for reasonable laws.”
Gun control remains one of the most contentious issues in American politics, but it has largely taken a backseat this election cycle, with voters’ primarily concerned with the economy, immigration and abortion.
But now that the issue has resurfaced, critics have seized on it as an example of Harris’ shifting policy positions. She has dropped her previous support for a mandatory buyback program for assault weapons, a stance that gun advocates and the Trump campaign have jumped on.
When she was district attorney in San Francisco in 2007, Harris appeared to suggest that police should be able to enter the home of legal gun owners to inspect how they stored their firearms.
“We’re going to require responsible behaviors among everybody in the community, and just because you legally possess a gun in the sanctity of your locked home doesn’t mean that we’re not going to walk into that home and check to see if you’re being responsible and safe in the way you conduct your affairs,” she said then.
More than a decade later, during the 2019 presidential primary, Harris said she supported a “mandatory gun buyback program” strictly for assault weapons. Around the same time, she made her first public remarks about owning a gun:
“I am a gun owner, and I own a gun probably for the same reason a lot of people do—for personal safety,” Harris said at the time. “I was a career prosecutor.”
Republicans frequently portray Democrats as a threat to the Second Amendment, though public polling over the last decade has shown voters are increasingly in favor of some curbs on guns.
As Matt Lacombe, the author of Firepower: How the NRA Turned Gun Owners Into a Political Force, told NPR earlier this month:
“The advantage that Republicans used to have on this issue was a result of the fact that the pro-gun side cared a lot more about it than the gun control side.
“That has flipped in a way that maybe hasn’t had the impact that reproductive rights has, but that nonetheless sort of changes which constituencies of each party end up being most important, electorally.”
Democrats’ attempt to portray themselves as the party of common-sense gun laws was apparent during the Democratic National Convention in August, when Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor and Harris’s running mate, was introduced by his wife, Gwen.
She explained the evolution of his position on gun control from reliable NRA ally to a gun reform advocate following the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012.
Walz’ rating with the NRA has gone from ‘A’ to ‘F’, which he has said he loses no sleep over.
Gun safety briefly made headlines on the campaign trail after the Apalachee High School shooting in Winder, Georgia, on September 4, when a troubled student allegedly killed four people, including two of his classmates.
During a rally in the aftermath of that mass shooting, Harris rejected the idea that supporting the Second Amendment and advocating for gun safety are contradictory, emphasizing a need for balanced regulations.
“It’s a false choice to be in favor of the Second Amendment or want to take guns away,” Harris said. “I’m in favor of the Second Amendment, and I know we need reasonable gun safety laws in our country.”
