A resurfaced video shows that Vice President Kamala Harris previously supported authorities walking into the homes of legal gun owners to “check to see” if they were “being responsible and safe” while serving as the district attorney of San Francisco.
Harris’ comments came during a press conference in May of 2007 while introducing the legislation that the vice president helped draft. Fox News reported that the gun legislation was intended to penalize gun owners who failed to properly store firearms in their homes.
At the time, Harris said, “We’re going to require responsible behaviors among everybody in the community, and just because you legally possess a gun in the sanctity of your locked home doesn’t mean that we’re not going to walk into that home and check to see if you’re being responsible and safe in the way you conduct your affairs.”
According to Fox News, the 2007 press conference came shortly after the bill was introduced to San Francisco’s board of supervisors. The bill was signed into law just a few months after the press conference by former San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who now serves as the Democratic governor of California.
READ MORE: Video: VP Harris supported sending cops to seize guns from ‘lists’ of gun owners
During the press conference regarding the safe-storage firearm bill in May of 2007, Harris claimed that the policy was an effort to legislate “our values.” She explained, “When we create laws, it’s not only about creating an opportunity, if you will, to prosecute someone for committing a crime, but more importantly, when we legislate our values, it’s about trying to encourage certain types of behavior.”
Fox News reported that during last week’s presidential debate, Harris refused to directly respond to her recent gun control policy changes, such as her stance on mandatory gun buybacks, until former President Donald Trump argued that she had a “plan to confiscate everybody’s gun.” Bloomberg previously reported that Harris supported mandatory gun buybacks while running for president in 2019, describing buyback as “a good idea.”
Despite the vice president’s past comments, James Singer, a Harris campaign spokesperson, told Fox News that under a Harris-Walz administration, the government would “uphold and defend the law and rights of Americans, including the Second Amendment.”
Singer added, “The law in question, requiring sensible gun storage in homes, was upheld by Republican appointed judges in the ninth circuit and declined to be reviewed by the Supreme Court.”
