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Why Kamala Harris is highlighting her gun ownership

Kamala Harris "in favour of Second Amendment and assault weapon ban"

US Vice-President Kamala Harris has highlighted a little-known aspect of her biography - the fact that she is a gun owner - to stake out ground on the issue of firearms control.

After Donald Trump claimed during their presidential debate that she would "confiscate everybody's gun" if elected, Harris replied by reaffirming that she was a gun owner herself - like her running mate, Tim Walz.

"We’re not taking anyone’s guns away, so stop with the continuous lying about this stuff," she told Trump.

The following week, Harris added that she would be willing to use her gun if an intruder entered her home.

"If somebody breaks into my house, they're getting shot," she said during a livestreamed event with Oprah Winfrey.

Gun control remains among the most contentious issues in American politics but has largely taken a backseat to other policy areas this election.

The question raised during the showdown with Trump over where exactly Harris stood was the first time the issue had even come up in a 2024 debate.

Now that the issue has been raised, critics have pounced on it as an example of Harris's shifting policy positions.

Despite stressing to Winfrey that she supports gun ownership, the Democratic candidate has also argued for tougher laws.

She told the host that she continued to support a ban on assault weapons. A firearm of that type was "literally designed to be a tool of war", she said.

Harris has also recently spoken in favour of more thorough background checks and so-called red-flag laws. These allow people to apply to a judge to confiscate another person's gun if they are deemed to be a risk to themselves or others.

But Harris has also dropped her previous support for a buyback programme for assault weapons.

Gun buybacks

Gun buyback proposals would force gun owners to hand over their AR-15s and other assault-style weapons to the government.

They gained steam during the last election's Democratic presidential primary race, when they received endorsements from a number of senior Democrats including Harris.

In October 2019, said she supported taking the nation's millions of assault weapons "off the streets, but doing it in the right way".

Buyback initiatives have taken place in cities across the US since at least the 1970s, though research indicates that they are often very expensive and not effective as a standalone strategy to curb gun violence.

Advocates, however, point to the impact of two mandatory buybacks in Australia following the deadliest mass shooting on its soil in 1996. The country has largely avoided mass firearm violence since that incident.

Harris made her own case for buybacks as part of a broader effort to rein in the "clear problem" of gun violence. She argued that politicians were offering voters "a false choice" between protecting gun rights and taking guns away.

But by the time the 2024 presidential debate came round, ABC News moderator Linsey Davis noted that Harris no longer supported a buyback programme.

Harris did not directly explain why, and her campaign did not respond to the BBC's request for comment.

Why are these Americans turning in (some of) their guns?

Harris's experience

The furthest that Harris has gone in explaining her gun ownership was also in 2019, when she said: “I am a gun owner, and I own a gun for probably the reason a lot of people do – for personal safety. I was a career prosecutor.”

Harris began her career as the district attorney - or the top prosecutor - in Alameda County, and then for the city of San Francisco. She also served from 2011 to 2017 as California's attorney general (AG), the top law enforcement job in the state.

Harris still owns that same weapon, which is a handgun, according to an aide. It remains in a secure location at her home in California.

William Lockyer, a fellow Democrat who served as California AG himself from 1999 to 2007, told the BBC that it was not uncommon for a local or state-level prosecutor to own a gun, even though the role comes with its own security team.

"I don’t know about Kamala's experience as AG, but I received a threat on average every day during my eight years," he said.

Walz the hunter

It is rare for elected officials in Harris's party to speak openly about their experience as gun owners. Her vice-presidential nominee, Tim Walz, is a notable exception.

Walz, from Nebraska, grew up hunting during summer breaks and trained with firearms over the more than two decades he spent as a National Guardsman.

At the start of his political career, he held an A rating from the National Rifle Association (NRA) - meaning he was a pro-gun politician in the organisation's eyes - and was often spotted wearing an NRA ballcap.

But Walz changed tack amid a series of deadly shootings during the 2010s, including at schools in Sandy Hook, Connecticut and Parkland, Florida.

He held an F rating from the NRA by the time he left Congress and, as Minnesota governor, he signed expansions of background checks and other restrictions into law.

"I know guns," he said at the Democratic National Convention last month.

"I'm a veteran. I'm a hunter. I was a better shot than most Republicans in Congress and I have the trophies to prove it. But I'm also a dad.

"I believe in the Second Amendment, but I also believe that our first responsibility is to keep our kids safe.”

On the Republican side, Trump has referred to himself as "the best friend gun owners have ever had in the White House".

Speaking to NRA members in February, he bragged that he "did nothing" despite pressure to take action after shootings and pledged "no one will lay a finger on your firearms” if he is re-elected.

Trump's record

As a New York resident, Donald Trump owned three licenced firearms, two of which he surrendered in 2023 following his arrest on 34 counts of falsifying business records.

The third weapon is said to have been legally transferred to Florida, the state where he now lives.

His criminal conviction in New York required that his gun licence there be revoked.

Convicted criminals are barred under federal law from owning guns or ammunition, but authorities in Republican-led Florida have expressed no interest in confiscating his weapon.

Trump once claimed in an interview that he "always" carried a gun. Under Florida law, he can carry his firearm concealed and does not need a permit.

The Trump campaign has also said his support for gun rights was unshaken by the attempt on his life this July, when a 20-year-old armed with his father's AR-style rifle shot at least eight rounds in his direction and grazed his right ear with a bullet.

JD Vance, his running mate and a former Marine, has described firing guns from an early age and was lauded earlier this year for his "perfect voting record" on protecting the Second Amendment by the pro-gun group, Gun Owners of America.

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