By Nandita Bose
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democrat Vice President Kamala Harris has mentioned she is a gun owner in two recent interviews and during her debate with Republican Donald Trump, a revelation that surprised some voters but carried a deliberate political message.
Harris owns a handgun for personal safety reasons, and it is stowed away in a secure location at her California home, the White House has said.
In an interview with ’60 Minutes’ on CBS News, Harris said she owned a Glock, an Austrian-designed weapon that is favored by U.S. law enforcement.
KEY QUOTES
“I have a Glock,” Harris said on the ’60 Minutes” interview that aired Oct. 7. “And I’ve had it for quite some time … my background is in law enforcement.”
“If somebody breaks in my house, they’re getting shot,” Harris told Oprah Winfrey in a Sept. 19 interview when asked about the gun.
“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 during her debate with Trump in September, referring to her running mate Walz.
In 2019, Harris told reporters “I am a gun owner, and I own a gun for probably the reason a lot of people do — for personal safety. I was a career prosecutor.”
“I’m a good marksman,” Harris said during an onstage Politico interview in 2015 in California after being asked if she’d ever fired a gun. “Yes, I have shot a gun many times,” she said, adding that it was a pistol.
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT:
Harris, along with most of her Democratic Party, has pushed for more gun safety legislation to curb the high rate of gun deaths and injuries in the U.S.
Republicans blocking this legislation have argued that Democrats want to seize Americans’ guns and overturn the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that gives Americans the right to “bear arms.”
Harris is trying to appeal to some voters among the one-third of Americans who own a gun and the two-thirds of Americans who support stronger regulation of gun ownership.
CONTEXT
Harris has called for implementing universal background checks and expanding red flag laws to take away guns from people who are deemed dangerous or unstable. She also wants to ban so-called assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.
Trump’s New York concealed carry license was suspended in April 2023 after his criminal indictment, CNN reported. He turned over two of three pistols he owned and the third was moved to Florida, according to the news outlet.
(Reporting by Nandita Bose in Washington; Editing by Heather Timmons and Deepa Babington)
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