Vice President Kamala Harris surprised some viewers when she mentioned during last month’s presidential debate that she has long been a gun owner. But, frankly, she was surprised by people’s surprise.
“That’s not the first time I’ve talked about it,” she told Bill Whitaker during a 60 Minutes primetime election special that aired Monday.
Asked by the correspondent what kind of gun she owned, and when and why she’d acquired it, the Democratic presidential nominee said hers was a Glock pistol.
“I’ve had it for quite some time,” she continued. “I mean, look, Bill, my background is in law enforcement. So—there you go.”
“Have you ever fired it?” Whitaker asked.
“Yes,” Harris replied, then laughed. “Of course I have. At a shooting range. Yes, of course I have.”
Harris talked about owning a firearm during her 2020 presidential campaign, mentioning it during stump speeches and in comments to reporters. “I own a gun for probably the reason a lot of people do—for personal safety,” she told the press in April 2019, nine months before she would drop out of the race and endorse Joe Biden. “I was a career prosecutor.”
But interest in the vice president’s views on gun ownership has surged since, in a reversal, Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race over the summer, ceding the Democratic nomination to her.
Harris’ first mention of her gun came during the Sept. 10 presidential debate, when she responded to an accusation from former President Donald Trump that she had “a plan to confiscate everybody’s gun.”
“This business about taking everyone’s guns away—Tim Walz and I are both gun owners,” Harris said. “We’re not taking anybody’s guns away, so stop with the continuous lying about this stuff.”
Later that month, she told Oprah Winfrey at a virtual campaign event in Michigan that she would use her gun to protect herself and her family if necessary. “If someone breaks in my house, they’re getting shot,” she said, smiling.
Winfrey laughed, and Harris joked that she “probably should not have said that” and that her staff would “deal with that later.”
The vice president has called for universal background checks and bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.
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