At a campaign rally in Atlanta on August 3, 2024, former President Donald Trump said Vice President Kamala Harris “supports mandatory gun confiscation.” He asked the crowd, “Would anybody mind if they came into your house and took away your gun? … She’s for taking away all of your guns.” The National Rifle Association (NRA) has repeated this confiscation lie, telling The Washington Post, “a camo hat can’t camouflage the fact that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are gun-grabbing radicals who support confiscating firearms from law-abiding hunters and gun owners.” A close look at the records of Vice President Harris and Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) shows that neither would support widespread gun confiscation nor disrespecting the Second Amendment, but both have the courage to stand up to the corporate gun lobby to save lives.
Background
Falsely accusing politicians of secretly wanting to take away all guns simply because they support commonsense gun violence prevention policies is a tired page in the corporate gun lobby’s playbook that uses lies and fear to protect its own interests. These types of slippery-slope arguments were levied against the 1994 Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, a popular law requiring licensed gun dealers to conduct federal background checks on firearm customers, and are still frequently used to oppose popular bipartisan policies including universal background checks and extreme risk protection orders. Fearmongering using the confiscation lie reached a fever pitch during the Obama administration, exemplified by absurd conspiracy theories spread for years by the NRA that the United Nations planned to confiscate U.S. firearms.
Vice President Harris and Gov. Walz oppose gun confiscation
Just as former President Barack Obama never confiscated firearms from law-abiding gun owners, Vice President Harris and Gov. Walz oppose confiscation. PolitiFact rated the confiscation accusations against Harris as “mostly false.” During her presidential primary campaign in 2019, Harris said she supported “a mandatory gun buyback program,” but only for assault weapons. In July 2024, the Harris campaign said she still supports an assault weapons ban but not a requirement to sell existing assault weapons to the federal government. PolitiFact “found no examples that she supports mandatory gun confiscation now and the majority of guns sold in the U.S. are handguns.”
Vice President Harris has led multiple federal initiatives to prevent gun violence
Gun violence costs the United States an estimated $557 billion and claims nearly 50,000 lives each year. Under the Biden-Harris administration, gun violence has continued to decline at a historic rate for a second year in a row after surging nearly 30 percent during former President Trump’s final year in office. National gun violence prevention organizations have called the Biden-Harris administration the strongest gun safety administration in U.S. history, but with gun deaths of children on the rise and the country suffering 656 mass shootings last year, there is still a long road ahead.
As vice president, Harris has helped lead efforts to improve public safety by strengthening gun laws and addressing the root causes of gun violence. For example, she launched the Safer States Initiative and the National Extreme Risk Protection Order Resource Center, and she announced the expansion of background checks. At the launch of the first White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, which is overseen by Harris, she said:
It’s a false choice to suggest you either have to choose between supporting the Second Amendment or passing reasonable gun safety laws. That’s a false choice. President Biden and I believe in the Second Amendment, but we also know commonsense solutions are at hand.
Gov. Walz has championed constitutional gun safety policies
Gov. Walz’s record on gun violence has evolved as the nation’s gun violence epidemic has worsened. A veteran and hunter representing a rural district in southern Minnesota, he co-chaired the bipartisan Congressional Sportsmen’s Caucus and was the best Democrat in a congressional clay shooting competition. After receiving “A” ratings from the NRA from 2010 to 2016, devastating mass shootings caused then-Rep. Walz to become a vocal critic of the gun lobby, which prioritizes gun manufacturer profits over American lives. Following a mass shooting at a 2017 Las Vegas music festival that left 61 people dead and more than 500 injured, Walz donated $18,000 he had received from the NRA to a veteran’s charity. After the 2018 Parkland high school shooting, the former teacher called the NRA the “biggest single obstacle to passing the most basic measures to prevent gun violence in America — including common-sense solutions that the majority of NRA members support.”
Since being elected governor of Minnesota in 2018, Walz has championed efforts to hold people who commit violence accountable and prevent gun violence from occurring in the first place— efforts that are supported by a majority of voters. More than 50,000 free gun locks were distributed since 2022 as part of his “Make Minnesota Safe & Secure” initiative. In 2023, the Minnesota Department of Health launched a violent death data dashboard, and Walz secured a $300 million investment in public safety departments across Minnesota.
During his 2023 State of the State address, Walz said, “We’re just used to being bullied by the gun lobby. But, you know what? I got an A rating from the NRA my first term in Congress. Now I get straight F’s. And I sleep just fine.” In May 2023, Gov. Walz further demonstrated his commitment to saving lives and his willingness to stand up to the gun lobby by signing several gun safety policies, including universal background checks and extreme risk protection orders. “As a veteran, gun-owner, hunter, and dad, I know basic gun safety isn’t a threat to the Second Amendment – it’s about keeping our kids safe,” he said at the bill signing.
Conclusion