‘If somebody breaks into my house, they’re getting shot,’ Harris joked.
Vice President Kamala Harris said Thursday that anyone who breaks into her home is “getting shot” in comments that appeared to be in jest during an interview with Oprah Winfrey in Michigan as she highlighted her ownership of a firearm.
Winfrey asked the Democratic presidential candidate about comments she made about being a gun owner at her debate with former President Donald Trump earlier this month.
“If somebody breaks into my house, they’re getting shot,” Harris said in the exchange with Winfrey. After laughing, she added, “I probably shouldn’t have said that, but my staff will deal with that later.”
Previously, Harris has highlighted that she owns a firearm for personal safety purposes, but that she supports bans on what she has said are “assault weapons,” referring to certain types of semi-automatic rifles.
Those types of firearms, she told Winfrey, were “literally designed to be a tool of war” and “has no place on the streets of a civil society.”
“I think for far too long on the issue of gun violence, some people have been pushing a really false choice to say you’re either in favor of the Second Amendment or you want to take everyone’s guns away. I’m in favor of the Second Amendment, and I’m in favor of assault weapons bans, universal background checks, red flag laws,” Harris said, which prompted Winfrey to ask about owning a gun.
In her remarks to Winfrey, Harris did not elaborate specifically on what types of weapons she would want to see banned. In public comments in 2019, Harris alluded to the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban during an interview in her first presidential campaign.
That ban, which expired in 2004, barred Americans from owning certain types of semi-automatic firearms and magazines with a number of exemptions. The ban included the term “semi-automatic assault weapon,” which has since been shortened to “assault weapon,” encompassing a range of semi-automatic rifles, pistols, and certain shotguns.
In an interview with Craig Melvin in 2019, Harris said she supported a “mandatory buyback program” for certain types of weapons. She told Winfrey on Thursday that she no longer supports such a program.
Harris previously has said at public events that she supports “red flag” laws, which can allow a judge to temporarily remove a gun from an individual who the judge deems dangerous, and enhanced background checks on gun buyers.
Harris, a former district attorney of San Francisco and former attorney general for California, told reporters in 2019 that she owns a gun. “I am a gun owner, and I own a gun for probably the reason a lot of people do—for personal safety,” she said. “I was a career prosecutor.”
Pro-gun groups, including the National Rifle Association (NRA), have opposed Harris’s policies surrounding firearms. Earlier this week, the NRA suggested that Harris’s public comments during the campaign season are not indicative of how she would implement her policies if she is elected—often focusing on her 2019 comments about mandatory gun buyback programs.
“With a long history of support for gun confiscation, and an unwillingness by Harris and her surrogates to disclaim pushing confiscation if they win the White House, it’s clear that Harris still supports gun confiscation and is a threat to the rights of all law-abiding gun owners,” the NRA said.
Meanwhile, a number of groups that support stricter gun laws, including Everytown for Gun Safety, publicly endorsed Harris for president after she declared her candidacy earlier this summer.
“Throughout her career in public service, Vice President Harris has been a powerful force in the fight for our freedoms—including the freedom to live free from the threat of gun violence,” Angela Ferrell-Zabala, executive director of Moms Demand Action, said in an Everytown news release.
Former President Donald Trump, who has faced two assassination attempts in the past two months, has often said that he will appoint federal judges who oppose new limits on firearms if he’s elected in November.
“We’ll see a continuation of supporting and defending the Second Amendment, and really where that comes into play is, you know, the judiciary,” Chris LaCivita, Trump’s senior adviser, said at an event hosted by the U.S. Concealed Carry Association gun rights group in July.
And in February, Trump told an NRA event that “no one will lay a finger on your firearms” and promised to roll back Biden-era gun rules if he retakes the White House.
Reuters contributed to this report.