Kamala Harris Backed San Francisco Handgun Confiscation Measure

Vice President Kamala Harris supported a 2005 poll measure that banned San Francisco residents from possessing pistols.

The Democratic presidential nominee backed Proposition H in her position as town’s District Lawyer on the time. The measure banned San Francisco residents from shopping for, promoting, and even possessing handguns. With exceptions included for active-duty legislation enforcement, navy, and licensed safety guards, 58 p.c voted in favor of the measure. But it surely confronted instant authorized scrutiny from the Nationwide Rifle Affiliation (NRA), California Rifle and Pistol Assocaition (CRPA), and different gun-rights teams.

“San Francisco was a frontrunner in proposing gun restrictions on the native degree, and he or she by no means met a gun management legislation she didn’t like,” Chuck Michel, who represented the NRA and CRPA in its battle in opposition to town, instructed The Reload. “Prop H was the crowning jewel.”

Harris broke with different distinguished gun-control advocates in backing the ban and confiscation measure, in keeping with the San Jose Mercury Information.

“Though Mayor Gavin Newsom has not taken a place, a number of of town’s most liberal leaders are supporting the far-reaching ban — together with District Lawyer Kamala Harris and 4 supervisors who’re listed as sponsors,” Mary Anne Ostrom reported on the time–including that Dianne Feinstein didn’t assist the measure regardless of imposing her personal failed handgun ban when she was mayor. “Feinstein, now a U.S. senator, will not be taking a place on Proposition H, as a result of she feels the state’s prime court docket has already dominated, a spokesman stated.”

The measure additionally banned “all Metropolis residents, with out exception, from promoting, distributing, transferring and manufacturing firearms and ammunition.” The Harris Marketing campaign didn’t reply to a request for touch upon her assist for the ban.

The information that Harris backed a complete ban on handgun gross sales and possession might influence the race for the presidency, which polling reveals is shut. Her assist for handgun confiscation early in her profession could undermine her current efforts to reassure gun homeowners she wouldn’t take their firearms.

“This enterprise about taking everybody’s weapons away; Tim Walz and I are each gun homeowners. We’re not taking anybody’s weapons away,” Harris stated on the debate, a line she’s repeated each time the subject has come up since.

Emphasizing her private possession of a handgun has been her go-to transfer since her marketing campaign walked again her assist for a distinct form of confiscation plan. Whereas operating for president in 2019, Harris repeatedly backed a compulsory buyback of “assault weapons.” Nevertheless, shortly after she took excessive of the Democratic ticket, her marketing campaign stated she would not advocate for a buyback if she turned president–as a substitute backing the identical insurance policies President Joe Biden had already been operating on.

“Right, the VP is not going to push for a compulsory purchase again as president,” Lauren Hitt, a Harris spokesperson, instructed The Reload in July. “She has expressed assist for crimson flag legal guidelines, common background checks and an assault weapons ban.”

The story additionally comes as Harris’s report on weapons has obtained elevated scrutiny. Final week, video surfaced of a 2007 press convention the place she defended a gun storage measure that adopted up Proposition H by saying legislation enforcement would enter the locked properties of lawful gun homeowners to examine their storage setups. The Nationwide Rifle Affiliation has additionally run advertisements in current weeks highlighting an amicus temporary she signed onto within the Supreme Courtroom’s 2008 Heller case, the place she argued Washington, DC’s whole handgun ban didn’t violate the Second Modification.

Proposition H was controversial when town council proposed it in 2005. Along with Newsom and Feinstein shunning it, police teams and a few gay-rights advocates brazenly opposed the handgun ban. It solely obtained the minimal of 4 signatures from town council to get on the poll as a consequence of considerations the courts would strike it down the identical method the California Supreme Courtroom tossed Feinstein’s ban years earlier than.

That’s precisely what ended up occurring.

“They tried to attract a line that distinguished it from the opposite case, after which that they had it handed,” Michel stated. “Harris supported that, and that was a whole whole civilian handgun ban. It handed. Then CRPA and NRA sued once more, and we knocked it out once more.”

In January 2008, just a few months earlier than the Supreme Courtroom invalidated Washington, DC’s related handgun ban, a California state appeals court docket struck down Proposition H. It dominated San Francisco had overstepped its authority in instituting the ban.

“[T]he sheer breadth of Prop H makes it susceptible to a preemption problem,” Choose Ignazio John Ruvolo wrote for a unanimous state appeals court docket in Fiscal v. San Francisco. “As already famous, Part 2 of Prop H bans the ‘sale, manufacture, switch or distribution’ of ammunition and firearms within the Metropolis, with out exception. With slim exceptions, Part 3 bans the possession of handguns by San Francisco residents, together with possession inside the sanctity of properties, companies, and personal property.”

Ruvolo concluded, “[W]hen it involves regulating firearms, native governments are effectively suggested to tread calmly.”

San Francisco was ordered to pay a whole lot of 1000’s of {dollars} in authorized charges to the gun-rights plaintiffs. It appealed the choice, however was finally rebuffed by the California Supreme Courtroom.