Vice President Kamala Harris was happy to remind voters that she owns a gun, but the more they learn about her firearms, the more they ask why she appears to support a double standard for gun owners.
During her 60 Minutes interview Monday night, Harris followed up on previous statements that she is a gun owner with some specifics that she owns a Glock pistol. The Democratic presidential nominee said she has owned one for “quite some time” and has practiced firing it at a gun range.
Harris has talked about being a gun owner for years, though she has mentioned it more often in recent weeks and months. But while gun owners who might have been comforted by the idea a Democrat who has supported mandatory “gun buyback” programs in the past and is a support for strict gun-control laws has a firearm herself, they are asking questions about the vice president’s weapon of choice.
“Note that California law classifies ALL Glocks as ‘unsafe handguns’ because they do not have a compliant chamber load indicator, lack a magazine disconnect mechanism, and until our lawsuit caused California to repeal the requirement, of course lacked microstamping,” Kostas Moros, an attorney with Michel & Associates representing the California Rifle & Pistol Association, posted on X.
“The only reason we can still buy Gen 3s is because they are grandfathered in, but they are still ‘unsafe handguns,’” Moros continued. “We can’t buy more modern Glocks new in gun stores (just secondhand from exempt cops, or from those who moved here with them from other states). She supported the Unsafe Handgun Act and expanded it such that microstamping began to be enforced in 2013. So why does she own an ‘unsafe handgun’?”
Microstamping is a controversial technology that engraves markings into a gun’s inner workings so that law enforcement authorities can match bullet cartridges to a specific gun and then find the firearm’s owner. According to Moros, all Glocks lack microstamping.
Harris was attorney general of California in 2013 when the Justice Department authorized the state to institute a 2007 law requiring new models of handguns to be microstamped. In 2023, the California legislature passed a law banning the sale of any handgun that isn’t “microstamping-enabled.”
Another gun rights organization, the National Association for Gun Rights, similarly criticized her on the same points.
“So a firearm she herself had listed as ‘unsafe’ in California,” the organization posted on X. “If it is a Gen 3 or older, only legal because they were grandfathered in. Is it microstamped Kamala? You had a hand in demanding they had to be. You asserted the technology worked. So is it?”
Harris didn’t get into the specifics of what generation Glock she owns, though as the former district attorney of San Francisco, which is a law enforcement position, she would have legally been allowed to purchase and own an “unsafe handgun.” She noted her background was in law enforcement during her 60 Minutes interview.
Harris has said she owns the gun for “personal safety” and was criticized for saying if somebody breaks into her home “they’re getting shot” in an interview at a campaign event with Oprah Winfrey.
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The vice president’s campaign has sought to moderate her position on firearms, and Harris, along with her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), has repeatedly told voters that they’re not “going to take their guns away.”
The Republican Party and former President Donald Trump have been backed by the National Rifle Association and have frequently supported gun rights. Democrats have often called for gun restrictions in response to mass shootings or other firearm-related casualty events.