Ban These Two Idiots, Not Guns

As their records amply demonstrate Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are both Anti-Second Amendment extremists.

Indeed, if it was up to Harris, Americans would not enjoy an individual right to keep and bear arms.

As our friends at the NRA-ILA have documented, in 2008, Harris was the District Attorney of San Francisco. In this capacity, Harris endorsed an amicus curiae brief of district attorneys in support of the District of Columbia and its handgun ban in the Heller case.

Advocating against the individual right to keep and bear arms, the brief argued,

courts have consistently sustained criminal firearms laws against Second Amendment challenges by holding that, inter alia, (i) the Second Amendment provides only a militia-related right to bear arms, (ii) the Second Amendment does not apply to legislation passed by state or local governments,

According to the brief, the Second Amendment does not protect an individual right, but rather, the lower court in Heller “create[d]” this right. The brief stated,

The lower court’s decision, however, creates a broad private right to possess any firearm that is a “lineal descendant” of a founding era weapon and that is in “common use” with a “military application” today.

Anticipating the Supreme Court’s move in the next landmark Second Amendment case (McDonald), Harris’s brief reiterated that the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms should not be incorporated to the states. Had this thinking been adopted, state and local governments would be empowered to curtail or even extinguish gun rights without restraint. State and local governments would have been able to bar their residents from owning any firearms whatsoever.

This was, and is, an extremist position that is not only out-of-syc with the Constitution as written, but with American public opinion.

In February 2008, months prior to the Heller decision, Gallup asked

Do you believe the Second Amendment to the U.S. constitution guarantees the rights of Americans to own guns, or do you believe it only guarantees members of state militias such as National Guard units the right to own guns?

73-percent of those surveyed responded that the Second Amendment protects the right of Americans to own guns, with a mere 20-percent endorsing the militia interpretation.

A Quinnipiac University poll conducted shortly after the Heller decision, in July 2008, mirrored these results. This poll asked respondents, “Would you support or oppose amending the United States Constitution to ban individual gun ownership?” 78-percent opposed such a measure, while only 17-percent were found to be in favor.

A February 2018 Economist/YouGov poll found a paltry 21-percent of respondents favored repealing the Second Amendment.

As for the discrete policy at issue in Heller and that Harris advocated the Supreme Court uphold, a handgun ban, the NRA-ILA noted since 1959 Gallup has intermittently asked respondents “Do you think there should or should not be a law that would ban the possession of handguns, except by the police and other authorized persons?” In 2008, a supermajority of 69 percent opposed such a measure. In 2023, opposition was up to 73 percent.

Harris supports gun confiscation and has repeatedly supported prohibiting and confiscating commonly-owned semi-automatic firearms, including America’s most popular rifle – the AR-15.

At a 2020 presidential campaign event in Londonderry, N.H. in September 2019, then-presidential candidate Harris told reporters that confiscation of commonly-owned semi-automatic firearms was “a good idea.” Elaborating on her support for a compulsory “buyback” program, the senator added, “We have to work out the details -- there are a lot of details -- but I do…We have to take those guns off the streets.”

On the September 16, 2019 edition of the “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” Harris reiterated her support for gun confiscation. During a question-and-answer session, an audience member asked Harris “Do you believe in the mandatory buyback of quote-unquote assault weapons and whether or not you do, how does that idea not go against fundamentally the Second Amendment?”

The candidate responded, “I do believe that we need to do buybacks.” Making clear that she believes Americans’ Second Amendment rights are for sale, Harris added “A buyback program is a good idea. Now we need to do it the right way. And part of that has to be, you know, buy back and give people their value, the financial value.”

Further demonstrating Harris’s commitment to gun confiscation, the candidate called for a “mandatory buyback program” during an October 3, 2019 MSNBC gun control forum and again during a November 2019 interview with NBC Nightly News.

Harris appears to have carried this position into the vice president’s office. During an October 26, 2023 state luncheon with Australia Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Harris lauded Australia’s gun control measures. Referencing violence perpetrated with firearms, Harris remarked, “And let us be clear, it does not have to be this way, as our friends in Australia have demonstrated.” (emphasis added).

In 1996, Australia adopted a near total ban on civilian ownership of semi-automatic rifles and semi-automatic and pump-action shotguns. To coincide with the new restrictions, the government instituted a mandatory “buy-back” confiscation scheme where gun owners were warned that they were required to turn their newly-prohibited firearms over to the government for a set price. As the scheme did not grandfather the possession of firearms owned prior to the new restrictions, the ban and “buy-back” amounted to gun confiscation.

Bad as Kamala Harris is on the Second Amendment, her running mate, Minnesota Governor and former Congressman Tim Walz is even worse, primarily because he abandoned his previously held positions in favor of Second Amendment Rights to curry favor with the Far Left of the Democratic Party.

As Larry Keane, writing for the National Shooting Sports Foundation’s website observed, Gov. Walz will only amplify Vice President Harris’ gun control animus. In fact, just like Vice President Harris, Gov. Walz is a darling of radical antigun special interest groups.

Billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety lauded him as “2023 State Level Gun Sense Lawmaker of the Year.” The award was also given to Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, who signed a law banning MSRs in his state and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who also signed gun control laws. That puts him firmly in the center of state executives hostile to the Second Amendment and lawful firearm ownership.

Gov. Walz signed laws in his state to require universal background checks that require private parties to facilitate firearm transfers through a firearm retailer with an FBI National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). He also signed a state “red flag” law, that allows state authorities to confiscate firearms from individuals without Due Process rights being protected.

When he signed the bills, he claimed, “This is not about the Second Amendment.”

At the same time he signed the bill, he went on the attack against the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. More specifically, he urged a ban on MSRs, disparaging them as “weapons of war” and saying they don’t have a place in America. That’s despite the fact the U.S. Supreme Court’s Heller decision said firearms in common use are protected. Common use means, as the Supreme Court has said, “typically possessed,” Given that there are over 28.1 million of these semiautomatic rifles – that operate the same way as Gov. Walz’s pheasant hunting shotgun – they are clearly typically possessed and commonly used for lawful purposes.

That’s not new. Anyone who observed Gov. Walz’s political career can see he embraced increasingly radical gun control ideas through his tenure in Congress and into his election and re-election as Minnesota’s governor. After earning an endorsement from Bloomberg’s Moms Demand Action gun control group when he was first running in Minnesota’s governor’s race, he told The Minnesota Post, “Endorsements are not a pat on the back. They are much more kicks in the butt.”

He knew more would be expected and he eagerly delivered for gun control. In addition to signing the universal background check law and “red flag” law, he recently signed a law to ban binary triggers. He supported a measure to require firearms be locked in a private residence, something the Heller decision said is unconstitutional. That bill never made it to his desk. He also supported a measure to require mandatory reporting of lost or stolen firearms, which could punish firearm owners a second time for being the victim of a crime.

He was also the Vice President Harris advocate who opened the attack line that Republicans who want to preserve freedoms are “weird.”

“Don’t get sugarcoating this, these are weird ideas,” Fox News reported Gov. Walz saying about Republican proposals. This is the same governor who just days ago on a “White Dudes for Harris” video conference call said, “one person’s socialism is another person’s neighborliness.”

Socialist movements are notorious for disarming their populace. Nazi Germany, Cuba’s Fidel Castro, Venezuela’s Dictator Hugo Chavez, along with Communist countries like the former Soviet Union, the Chinese Community Party, North Korea all pursued policies of disarming their people. They started as calls for “security.” They ended as human rights atrocities.

Gov. Walz recently called former President Trump and his supporters “fascist.” So much for turning down the overheated political rhetoric following the attempted assassination of former president and Republican presidential nominee.

Former President Trump’s team wasted no time in pointing out that Gov. Walz will fit in with the far-left radical policy agenda that Vice President Harris helped craft through her time in the Biden-Harris administration and now as candidate to sit in the Oval Office.

“It’s no surprise that San Francisco Liberal Kamala Harris wants West Coast wannabe Tim Walz as her running-mate – Walz has spent his governorship trying to reshape Minnesota in the image of the Golden State,” said Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt, according to The National Review.

With two radical Marxists leading the Democratic Party’s ticket there are a lot of things on the line in this election, but at the top of the list is our constitutional liberty, particularly those rights guaranteed by the First and Second Amendments. Don’t be fooled by Tim Walz’s camo hat and Kamala Harris’ remake into a “centrist.” If Harris and Walz are elected, they are coming for your guns.

*Thanks to our friends at Shark Arms https://sharkarms.com/ for the little sticker at the center of today’s headline image. Go to Big Chris’ website, buy something and maybe he will grace you with your own “Ban Idiots Not Guns” sticker.

CHQ Editor George Rasley is a Glock ® certified pistol armorer, firearms instructor and a veteran of over 300 political campaigns, including every Republican presidential campaign from 1976 to 2008. He served as lead advance representative for Governor Sarah Palin in 2008 and has served as a staff member, consultant, or advance representative for some of America's most recognized conservative Republican political figures, including President Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp. A member of American MENSA, he served in policy and communications positions on the House and Senate staff, and during the George H.W. Bush administration he served on the White House staff of Vice President Dan Quayle.

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