An old interview from Vice President Harris's days as district attorney of San Francisco has surfaced, and it is not a good look from Constitutional grounds.
When speaking to the city's controversial mandatory gun ordinance in May 2007 beside then-Mayor Gavin Newsom, Harris told reporters, “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."
The SF gun lock mandate compelled gun owners to secure their firearms locked inside a container or disabled via a trigger lock. It brought immediate legal challenges that wound their way through the courts for almost a decade, ultimately ending at the U.S. Supreme Court.
While the high court declined the hear the case, Justices Scalia and Thomas dissented in the decision to turn away the petition with the latter writing:
The Court of Appeals in this case recognized that San Francisco’s law burdened the core component of the Second Amendment guarantee, yet upheld the law. Because of the importance of the constitutional right at stake and the questionable nature of the Court of Appeal’s judgment, I would have granted a writ of certiorari.
It should be noted at the time that the nine-member court had a liberal majority that included Justices Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan.
With Harris now on a national ballot for the White House headed to voters in less than two months, the old comments have resurfaced and have stirred emotion with pro-gun advocates.
"Kamala Harris is now & always has been an authoritarian narcissist hell-bent on violating our rights," observed the Firearms Policy Coalition.
Meanwhile, the NRA weighed in on X, saying, "Kamala Harris wants mass gun confiscation, and she’s willing to weaponize the government to enter your home and seize your legally owned guns."
Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms Chairman Alan Gottlieb called her remarks "alarming" and "stunning."
"This was Kamala’s typical word salad, but with vinegar dressing,” the gun rights advocate said. 'Taken at face value, this remark underscores our contention that she has been an anti-gun extremist throughout her political career.
"Even more alarming," said Gottlieb, "for someone who was a prosecuting attorney at the time, she would have known what she was describing would have been an egregious violation of the Fourth Amendment protection against warrantless searches and seizures. But it simply demonstrates that the Bill of Rights means nothing to Kamala Harris if it stands in the way of her gun prohibition agenda. What she was suggesting was, and remains, simply outrageous. It clearly shows the lengths and depths to which Harris would go in her personal war against the Second Amendment."
It was not just 2A groups that noticed the shocking old footage.
"Kamala Harris has officially threatened Americans with a violation of the 4th Amendment, and 2nd Amendment, in one authoritarian statement," said the Libertarian Party.
From Capitol Hill, U.S. Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga) described the old clip as "Terrifying, disqualifying, and blatantly unconstitutional."
While in Congress as a Senator, Harris was a co-sponsor of national mandatory gun lock legislation, a bill that could take away the three-day "safety valve" that prevents background checks on gun sales from lasting indefinitely, and a bill that would outlaw the digital publication of plans to make firearms.
Sworn in as San Francisco's DA by federal "assault weapon" ban author U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, once Harris got to Washington she backed Feinstein's rebooted ban that was far more expansive than the one narrowly passed in 1994. Harris also signed on to U.S. Sen. Ed Markey's (D-Mass) bill to use taxpayer funds for researching gun control as a public health issue, and U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy's (D-Conn) bill to expand background checks to all gun transfers.
Harris's current presidential platform includes many of the same policies.
