Kamala Harris Doubles Down on Gun Restrictions, Backs Community Violence Intervention Programs

The Democratic presidential nominee detailed a few of her gun coverage imaginative and prescient in a wide-ranging Tuesday interview, emphasizing her assist for an “assault weapons” ban and speaking a few new coverage for the primary time since taking excessive of the ticket.

Kamala Harris defined what sort of gun restrictions she’d pursue if elected president throughout a prolonged sitdown with the Nationwide Affiliation of Black Journalists. She introduced up her assist for a ban on the sale of fashionable firearms, such because the AR-15 rifle, and common background checks. However she additionally talked for the primary time in a high-profile interview about funding for much less controversial insurance policies like group violence interruption applications.

Tonya Mosley, host of NPR’s Recent Air, pressed Harris for specifics on how she would deal with gun violence, particularly crimes carried out with handguns. Harris didn’t reply to Mosely’s particular level about handguns at first, as an alternative repeating a line about her gun possession and banning assault weapons that she has used a number of instances since final week’s debate–together with in an interview with a Philadelphia information station on Friday.

“I’m a gun proprietor, and Tim Walzs is a gun proprietor, and we’re not attempting to take anyone’s weapons away from them, however we do want an assault weapons ban,” Harris stated. “Assault Weapons are designed to kill a whole lot of human beings rapidly and haven’t any place on the streets of a civil society.”

When Mosley reiterated that her query was about handguns, Harris argued a common background test regulation was one method to cease handguns from being utilized in crimes.

“It’s simply affordable you may wish to know earlier than somebody should purchase a deadly weapon in the event that they’ve been discovered by a court docket to be a hazard to themselves or others,” she stated. “You may simply wish to know.”

Mosley pressed once more, noting that lots of the handguns utilized in homicides in locations like Philadelphia are usually not bought legally. Harris responded by blaming gun reveals, particularly, for unlawful gun gross sales.

“I personally protested at a gun present in all probability 10, 15 years in the past concerning the gun present loophole and why we have to shut that,” Harris stated. “As a result of what finally ends up taking place is that gun reveals at flea markets, gun sellers are usually not, underneath current regulation prior to now, required to register their gross sales. And so you’re precisely proper that a whole lot of homicides, for instance, a great variety of them, I don’t have the statistic within the entrance of my thoughts, are dedicated with illegally bought weapons, and that’s why we have to handle every entry level within the problem, together with common background checks, closing the gun present loophole.”

Nevertheless, there may be little proof to counsel criminals receive firearms by way of gross sales at gun reveals or from sellers who’re unaware they’re promoting to someone who can’t legally purchase a gun. In a 2016 College of Chicago survey of inmates convicted of gun crimes, the overwhelming majority stated they didn’t buy their firearms from licensed sellers or at gun reveals. As an alternative, they relied on acquiring weapons from individuals they knew, unlawful road sellers, or by stealing them.

Moreover, regardless of what Harris implies, gun reveals would not have any particular carve out underneath federal regulation. As an alternative, the regulation regulates business firearms gross sales. Anybody “engaged within the enterprise” of dealing firearms should receive a license from the federal authorities. Anybody with a federal firearms license should conduct background checks on buyer gross sales no matter the place the transaction takes place–whether or not at a gun retailer, on-line, or at a gun present.

Federal regulation doesn’t regulate used gross sales between individuals who aren’t licensed sellers. So, most states don’t require a background test on these sorts of gross sales, which might occur at many gun reveals.

The Biden Administration has sought to broaden who the ATF considers “engaged within the enterprise” and should receive a license through the use of federal rulemaking. Nevertheless, it has confronted authorized challenges and was partly blocked by a federal choose earlier this yr.

15 states and the District of Columbia have adopted common background test legal guidelines. These require that each one gun gross sales, and most gun transfers, be processed by way of a licensed vendor and topic to a background test. These legal guidelines usually embody various carveouts for gross sales or transfers between relations and even mates. Harris helps adopting an identical coverage on the federal degree, however, as along with her different gun insurance policies, she hasn’t launched a proposal with detailed language.

Mosley famous the controversy surrounding weapons in America has solidified round two gun management insurance policies and requested if Harris had every other concepts past these.

“Each time we deliver up this problem of gun violence, common background checks comes up, and a ban on assault weapons,” Mosley stated. “Are there different options that you just’re additionally fascinated by that may get at this problem?”

Harris pointed to psychological well being therapy and group violence intervention applications as different measures she believes the federal authorities ought to implement alongside the gun restrictions she’s backing.

“As Vice President with the President, we had been in a position to move the primary significant gun security laws in 30 years,” she stated in reference to 2022’s Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. “And a part of what that concerned was thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of {dollars} to place extra psychological well being counselors in public faculties. As a result of we all know that there’s a side of this that’s about treating the trauma and coping with it at its supply earlier than it finally ends up manifesting itself in an issue.”

She argued extra funding was mandatory for violence prevention tasks.

“There may be the work that we have to do that’s about placing assets into communities round violence prevention,” Harris stated. “I’ve been a giant advocate of that for years, which incorporates what we have to do round placing assets into community-based intervention that isn’t simply requiring on the nice individuals in the neighborhood to volunteer to do the intervention however really paying individuals to do it as a result of it’s a full-time job.”

Nevertheless, she argued these weren’t new concepts, and lots of the options to gun violence have already been recognized.

“There are only a few options that we haven’t considered,” Harris stated. “We have to put the assets into them.”