Unearthed Video Exposes Kamala Harris’ Pledge To ‘Walk Into’ Legal Gun Owners’ Homes
Gun owners fearing the worst from a Harris-Walz administration may be right to be concerned after video footage emerged showing the vice president, as a former prosecutor, promising to “walk into” private homes and confiscate firearms.
Vice President Kamala Harris served as district attorney for San Francisco from 2003 to 2011, during which time she supported the passage of a new law intending to crack down on improper firearm storage in homes. While touting the new law in 2007, Harris can be seen on video telling a gaggle of reporters that her office has the authority to unilaterally enter the homes of gun owners and inspect their weapons storage procedures. “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 in a clip obtained by Fox News.
The remarks came during a press conference where Harris was among other Democratic prosecutors promising to curtail gun ownership if a person’s firearms were found to be improperly stored in connection with the new law. The law, passed by the San Francisco City Council earlier that year, was signed into law by then-Mayor Gavin Newsom. In addition to stringent new storage requirements, other items in the law included a new requirement for legal gun distributors to submit an inventory to the chief of police every six months, and a ban on legal gun ownership in public housing.
Newsom, now California governor, said at the time, “San Francisco now has the strictest anti-gun laws in the county.” Harris added during her press conference that the new law signaled “our values” in an attempt to “encourage certain kinds of behavior.”
“When we create laws, it’s not only about creating an opportunity, if you will, to prosecute someone for committing a crime, but more importantly, when we legislate our values, it’s about trying to encourage certain types of behavior,” she said at the time. Ironically, it’s not questions about shifting “values” that are getting Harris in trouble with the media.
The vice president’s past tough-on-crime mantra doesn’t square with pledges she made when running for president in 2019, including providing federal funding for gender reassignment surgeries for convicted felons and reducing federal conviction rates for certain federal offenders. In a joint interview with running mate Tim Walz, Harris told CNN’s Dana Bash that her values “haven’t changed,” a line that Lora Ries, a border security expert at the Heritage Foundation, finds suspect.
“As she said last night in her interview, her values have not changed. She said that over and over again,” Ries told Fox. “She is telling her base, ‘Look, don’t worry about what the campaign is saying right now. We just have to say that to try and get elected. But my values have not changed.’”
Even stalwart progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) say that Harris is downplaying her progressive bona fides “in order to win the election,” a decision that he said he and his fellow far-left lawmakers understand. “Her views are not mine, but I do consider her a progressive,” he told NBC’s “Meet The Press” earlier this month.
During last week’s debate, former President Donald Trump accused Harris of having a “plan to confiscate everybody’s gun.” Harris, who did not directly outline her shifting views on gun control, claimed she and Gov. Walz are both gun owners who respect the Second Amendment. “This business about taking everyone’s guns away… 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,” Harris said in response to Trump’s criticisms.
