Harris camp’s messaging on this key issue could be a major problem for Trump: analysis

24 September 2024

Former President Donald Trump and other MAGA Republicans have been attacking Vice President Kamala Harris as anti-Second Amendment. But Harris has been quick to respond that in fact, she is a gun owner herself — as is her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz — and that common-sense regulations are quite compatible with gun ownership.

Harris made that point during her September 10 debate with Trump in Philadelphia as well as during an interview with Oprah Winfrey. After Trump claimed that Democrats "want to confiscate your guns," the vice president countered, "Tim Walz and I are both gun owners. We're not taking anybody’s guns away."

MSNBC's Alexander Nazaryan, in an op-ed published on September 24, praises Harris' messaging on guns and argues that it could become a major problem for Trump and other Republicans.

"Here's one I didn't have on my bingo card for 2024: Vice President Kamala Harris teaching liberals how to talk about guns," Nazaryan writes. "For a politician with a reputation for word salads and evasions, her recent comments on the Second Amendment have been refreshingly clear and straightforward, even if they were also relatively brief."

Nazaryan stresses that although Democrats "have struggled to talk about the Second Amendment for ages," that isn't a problem with Harris.

"It's worth noting that even as she has touted her own gun ownership, Harris has made clear that she supports a ban on assault weapons — a Clinton-era policy that massively reduced mass shootings," Nazaryan explains. "Reinstating a ban would do nothing about the thousands of handgun deaths, including suicides, but it would still help. So would background checks, which Harris also supports."

Nazaryan continues, "The American people support these measures, too. In fact, we are much closer to a consensus on guns than partisans on either side would have you believe. And that consensus resides where Harris appears to already be: Let's keep guns legal, but let's also do what we can to keep guns out of the hands of people who are demonstrably dangerous, abusive or mentally ill."

Alexander Nazaryan's full op-ed for MSNBC is available at this link.

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