WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris surprised some viewers during her debate with Donald Trump by saying she is a gun owner, in a bid to debunk her Republican opponent’s accusation that she wants to confiscate guns.
“Tim Walz and I are both gun owners,” Harris said, referring to her running mate. “We’re not taking anyone’s guns away.”
Harris spoke about owning a gun in 2019, during her first presidential campaign.
“I am a gun owner, and I own a gun for probably the same reason a lot of people do: for their own safety,” Harris said previously. “I was a career prosecutor.”
Her campaign said at the time that Harris had purchased a handgun years earlier and kept it under lock and key. A spokesman did not provide further details when asked Tuesday.
The gun control debate came as Trump tried to portray Harris, who began her political career as a San Francisco district attorney, as a radical liberal.
“She’s destroying our country,” he said. “She’s got a plan to dismantle the police. She’s got a plan to take away everybody’s guns. She’s got a plan to not allow fracking in Pennsylvania or anywhere else.”
Harris refuted all of Trump’s allegations, adding that he “needs to stop constantly lying about these kinds of things.”
Walz, the governor of Minnesota, has also spoken about gun control and bragged about his shooting skills.
Republicans often portray Democrats as a threat to the Second Amendment, while Democrats portray their proposals as common-sense measures to protect public safety.
Harris has called for universal background checks and expanding red flag laws to take guns away from people deemed dangerous or unstable. She also wants to ban so-called assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.