U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris as soon as stated the authorities might go into gunowners’ homes to test that weapons are safely saved.
Harris made these remarks in 2007, when she was district legal professional in San Francisco and the town was trying to curb gun deaths. Laws requiring gun safes and set off locks handed months later and was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court docket in 2015.
Within the weeks forward of the 2024 U.S. presidential election, a video circulating on-line purported to indicate the Democratic candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, saying that gun house owners ought to anticipate visits from the authorities to make sure that they adopted security guidelines. For instance, a Sept. 20, 2024, Instagram post by conservative pundits Tucker Carlson and Jesse Kelly shared the footage:
The blurry video confirmed Harris saying, “Simply since you legally possess a gun within the sanctity of your locked house doesn’t suggest that we’re not going to stroll into that house and test to see that you simply’re being accountable and secure in the way in which you conduct your affairs.”
The publish had gained 443,000 views and 50,000 likes, as of this writing. “I dare them to stroll into my house!!” a commenter stated.
An extended model of the video additionally appeared on a pro-gun-rights YouTube channel:
The video and quote come from a 2007 news conference by then-San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and Harris, then the town’s district legal professional, about new laws that might search to implement secure storage of weapons. Harris’ full quote (starting at 32:40) was as follows:
For probably the most half, we’re not creating one thing new. It is simply time. And I believe that with the speed of homicides that we have been seeing, and definitely our deal with that and our concern about it — it is simply time and it is the proper factor to do. And getting again to that earlier query, I imply, I believe that the people who find themselves going to oppose largely what we’re doing are the NRA, and they aren’t African American, and individuals who stay on this group and are traumatized by violence on daily basis. It is individuals who personal weapons who’re quietly sitting on these weapons, and people weapons would possibly find yourself being the weapons of the destruction of a group, as a result of they get in within the palms of some child who decides that they like what they see on tv they usually need to act that method. So that is about simply principally saying that we’ll require accountable behaviors amongst all people locally, and simply since you legally possess a gun within the sanctity of your locked house doesn’t suggest that we’re not going to stroll into that house and test to see should you’re being accountable and secure in the way in which you conduct your affairs.
In different phrases, Harris did say the quote. In the beginning of the information convention, Lenore Anderson, then director of the mayor’s workplace, made clear that Harris had been instrumental in scripting this laws. With them stood San Francisco Police Commissioner Joe Marshall, who expressed assist for the laws.
Months later, the legislation became law in San Francisco. The legislation aimed to make possession and sale of firearms tougher, to maintain higher observe of firearms sellers’ inventories and to power gun house owners to safe their weapons both in lock containers or utilizing set off locks.
In 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed this legislation to stand after the NRA sued the town to cease its enforcement.
Harris, who is a gun owner, stated throughout her 2024 presidential marketing campaign that whereas she would assist stricter gun legal guidelines, she wouldn’t search to confiscate people’s guns, as her opponent — former President Donald Trump — claimed.
