While the media is lobbing softball questions at Kamala Harris over her alleged gun ownership (and largely ignoring her past support for bans on handguns), the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms says it’s time for Harris to come clean about her pistol.
On Friday, the group (of which, in full disclosure, I’m a board member) called out Harris for her refusal to explain or elaborate on basic facts about what kind of gun she owns, when she bought it, and whether she supported a ban on handguns for everyone else when she took possession of her Glock.
“Purely in the interest of curbing speculation about the pistol,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, “the vice president should immediately reveal what caliber and model of pistol she owns, whether she has a California carry license, and in particular, whether her Glock has a magazine capable of holding more than ten rounds, especially since she supports laws that prevent the rest of us from having magazines that hold more than ten rounds. We need to know if she is a hypocrite, a liar or both.
“It is important, if not imperative, that Kamala Harris comes clean about this sidearm she claims to have fired,” he added. “She has obviously owned this handgun for several years, so how long has it been since she took the pistol to a gun range for practice? She should be able to recite how many cartridges fit in the magazine, whether she keeps it loaded, or if it is gathering dust in a safe somewhere so it can be used as a political prop so she can claim to be a gun owner who supports restrictive gun control laws.
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“When did she buy it, and where,” he inquired. “Does she clean it regularly, and has she recently practiced and trained with it? Although she’s claimed to have fired the gun at a range, did she have any formal training? Where is the pistol right now, and is it safely stored?
Gottlieb went on to say that “a serious gun owner can answer these questions reflexively, but a faker invariably tries to change the subject,” adding, “Kamala Harris owes the American public a straight answer, and so far, we haven’t gotten one.”
Gottlieb’s last question has been answered by the Harris campaign, if not the candidate herself. An unnamed aide told CNN that she keeps her pistol “securely stored inside her home in Los Angeles”, and does not have a second firearm at the Naval Observatory, which is the vice president’s official residence.
But the other questions have yet to be answered, even as the media goes gaga over Kamala’s gun talk. And these aren’t “gotcha” questions. The National Shooting Sports Foundation’s Larry Keane recently opined that they get to the heart of Harris’s hypocrisy when it comes to gun ownership.
The vice president’s professional career also matters to her ability to own a GLOCK specifically. Vice President Harris began her legal career in California in the late 1990s and early 2000s. She started in Alameda County’s district attorney’s office. Next, she was recruited to the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office and later to the Office of the City Attorney of San Francisco. She was then elected District Attorney for San Francisco in 2003, followed by a jump up to California Attorney General in 2010 and winning reelection in 2014.
What’s notable here is that California’s strict handgun possession and purchasing law, the Unsafe Handguns Act (UHA), was enacted in 2001. GLOCK handguns have largely been prohibited for purchase by the Average Joe in California. GLOCK Generation 1, 2, 4 and 5, in addition to U.S.-made GLOCK handguns are all currently prohibited for sale to the general public by California’s restrictions. Only Austrian-made GLOCK Generation 3 handgun models, which were grandfathered, are currently approved per the Unsafe Handgun Act (UHA).
It is possible Vice President Kamala Harris purchased her GLOCK before 2001. If you believe that – I have a Golden Gate Bridge to sell you.
What is most likely – if it is in fact true that the vice president purchased at some point in the past 10 or so years and owns a GLOCK – is that she used the UHA carveout exemption for law enforcement, which included certain employees in the district attorney’s office or later when she was elected as attorney general.
The law states:
“This section shall not apply to any of the following:… (4) The sale or purchase of any pistol, revolver or other firearm capable of being concealed upon the person, if the pistol, revolver, or other firearm is sold to … any district attorney’s office … for use in the discharge of their official duties. Nor shall anything in this section prohibit the sale to, or purchase by, sworn members of these agencies.”
The facts are simple. If the vice president does indeed own a GLOCK handgun in California for purposes of self-defense, she possesses it under a gun control carveout that is not available to millions of law-abiding Californians. By the way – the vice president, as leader of The White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, is accused of colluding with gun control groups and the City of Chicago to sue GLOCK over allegations that they make unsafe firearms.
Keane also points to Harris’s support for a handgun ban in San Francisco in 2005 and her backing of D.C.’s handgun ban in 2007, when she co-authored an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to reject an individual rights interpretation of the Second Amendment. As Keane says, whiue Harris is trying to score political points in the closing days of the campaign in the hopes of persuading gun owners that she’s one of us, “the problem is, she’s the living encapsulation of gun control’s fundamental hypocrisy: Gun control for thee, not for me.”
Harris could have answered all of these questions already, but she and her campaign have been adamant about not getting into the details of her gun ownership. There’s simply no reason to maintain radio silence unless the answers would make her hypocrisy crystal clear to the very voters she’s hoping to woo with her claims of owning a Glock. I doubt that we’ll get any kind of substantive statement from the candidate or her unnamed aides, but frankly, that’s all the more reason we need to keep raising these questions; not only to Harris herself, but to our fellow gun owners as well.
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