US Vice President Kamala Harris has spoken of her willingness to use her gun if an intruder breaks into her home.
“If somebody walks into my house, they’re shot,” he said in a joking exchange during a live event in Michigan with host Oprah Winfrey on Thursday.
After a laugh, the Democratic presidential candidate continued: “I probably shouldn’t have said this, but my staff will deal with it later.”
Harris, who highlighted during the recent presidential debate that she was a gun owner, continued to reiterate that she supports banning assault weapons.
A firearm of this type was “literally designed to be an instrument of war,” he told Winfrey. “It has no place in the streets of a civil society.”
Harris’ opponents have increasingly pointed to Harris’ stance on guns as indicative of his changing political positions ahead of the November election.
As she reiterated her support for an assault weapons ban Thursday, the moderator of last week’s ABC News debate noted that the Democrat no longer supports a “buyback” program that would force gun owners to hand over their AR-15s and other assault weapons to the government.
Recovery proposals have gained steam during the 2020 Democratic presidential primary race, with Harris voicing his support at the time. “We have to have a recovery program, and we support a mandatory weapons recovery program,” he said in October 2019.
During the presidential debate, Harris did not directly explain why he no longer supports the idea of recovery.
Asked by Winfrey to confirm whether she had owned a gun for “a while” herself, Harris replied that she had. She said she was a supporter of the US Second Amendment, which protects the right to own guns.
But Harris stressed that she wanted stricter gun laws.
She went on to present her case for banning assault weapons, citing America’s problem with school shootings.
Harris said it was “chilling” for a child to have to go through a drill for such an incident. “It shouldn’t be like this,” he added.
After one of the most recent mass shootings in the United States, a 14-year-old boy was charged with the murder of four people at a high school in Georgia.
During Thursday’s event with Winfrey — who also spoke at last month’s Democratic National Convention — Harris was also asked about topics like immigration and the economy.
Celebrities like Jennifer Lopez appeared in the session, which was watched by about 300,000 people.
Harris’ gun ownership has been a matter of public record since 2019, when she said: “I have a gun for probably the reason a lot of people do — for personal safety. I was a career prosecutor.”
But his property came to the attention of many in the United States – including Winfrey, by his own admission – during last week’s presidential head-to-head with the Republican rival Donald Trump. It marked the first time the issue had come up in a 2024 debate.
Harris denied Trump’s claim that she would “confiscate everyone’s guns” if elected to the White House, pointing out that she and running mate Tim Walz, a hunting enthusiast, had their own guns .
Trump, too, still owns three guns, though he had to surrender two of them and face restrictions on the third after facing criminal charges in New York.
Harris also outlined his position at a recent rally in North Carolina, saying: “We who believe in the freedom to live free from gun violence will finally pass an assault weapons ban, gun controls background universals and red flag laws”.
So-called red flag laws allow people to ask a judge to confiscate another person’s weapons if they are considered a risk to themselves or others.