US Vice President Kamala Harris has said she would be prepared to use her gun if an intruder entered her home.
“If anyone comes into my house, they will get shot,” he said in an exchange of jokes with the presenter. Oprah Winfreyduring a live-streamed event.
“I probably shouldn’t have said that, but my team will deal with that later,” the Democratic candidate for the presidential elections on November 5 said with a laugh.
Last week, during the debate with the former president Donald TrumpHarris surprised everyone by saying she owned a gun.
This time he reiterated that he supports the Second Amendment to the US Constitutionwhich protects the right to possess and carry weapons, but is also in favor of ban assault weapons.
Such a firearm is “literally designed to be a tool of war,” Harris told Winfrey. “It has no place on the streets of civil society.”
Position on weapons
Harris’ opponents claim that His change of political position on weapons responds to electoral intereststo win the November elections.
Although Harris declared herself in favor of banning assault weapons with Winfrey on Thursday, last week the debate moderator indicated that the Democrat had withdrawn her support for a “buyback” program, which would force owners of AR-15s and other assault weapons to turn them over to the government.
During the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, Harris expressed support for buyback proposals, which gained traction at the time.
“We need a buyback program”he said in October 2019. “I support a mandatory gun buyback program.”
However, during the last presidential debate Harris did not explain why she had withdrawn her support for the buyback program.
Asked by Winfrey if she had ever owned guns, Harris said yes. However, she stressed that she wanted stricter gun laws.
School shootings
In defending her support for banning assault weapons, Harris alluded to the recurring school shootings in the United States.
“It’s chilling that a child has to go through a drill for an incident like that,” Harris said. “It doesn’t have to be this way.”
Following one of the most recent mass shootings in the United States, a 14-year-old boy has been charged with murdering four people at a Georgia high school.
The fact that Harris is a gun owner has been a matter of public record since 2019, when she stated: “I own a gun probably for the reason most people own one: for personal safety. I was a prosecutor. ”.
However, during last week’s debate with Trump, this raised eyebrows among many, including Winfrey herself, as it was the first time the topic had come up in a presidential debate this year.
Harris denied that she wants to “confiscate everyone’s guns” if she were elected to lead the White House, as Trump has claimed, noting that both she and her running mate, Tim Walz, a hunting enthusiast, owned their own firearms.
Trump owned three guns, though he had to surrender two of them and had restrictions placed on the third after facing criminal charges in New York.
“We who believe in the freedom to live safe from gun violence will finally pass a Assault weapons ban, universal background checks and red flag laws“Harris said recently.
The calls red flag laws allow people to petition a judge to confiscate another person’s gun if they are deemed to pose a risk to themselves or others.
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