In 2008, while serving as San Francisco’s district attorney, Vice President Kamala Harris co-signed an amicus curiae brief that argued against an individual’s right to firearm ownership under the Second Amendment. The brief was filed in support of the District of Columbia’s handgun ban during the landmark Supreme Court case District of Columbia v. Heller.
The document presented a case that the Second Amendment’s “right to bear arms” was limited to the context of organized state militias, suggesting it did not apply to private firearm ownership or restrict state and local gun regulations. Specifically, the brief claimed, “the Second Amendment provides only a militia-related right to bear arms,” positioning the amendment as a state-focused provision rather than an individual right.
Reason’s Eugene Volokh reports that, despite her more recent campaign statements, this brief reveals more about Harris’ views on the Second Amendment:
[1.] To begin with, the brief urged the Court to reverse the decision below, and thus to reinstate D.C.’s handgun ban. Thus, Harris’s view in that case was that the Second Amendment doesn’t preclude total bans on handgun possession.
[2.] The brief also came at a time when the great majority of federal courts (including the Ninth Circuit, which covered Harris’s jurisdiction, San Francisco) viewed the Second Amendment as not securing any meaningful individual right of members of the public to personally keep and bear arms. Rather, those courts viewed the Second Amendment as endorsing (to quote the then-existing Ninth Circuit precedent, which the brief itself later cited),
the “collective rights” model, [which] asserts that the Second Amendment right to “bear arms” guarantees the right of the people to maintain effective state militias, but does not provide any type of individual right to own or possess weapons.
Under this theory of the amendment, the federal and state governments have the full authority to enact prohibitions and restrictions on the use and possession of firearms, subject only to generally applicable constitutional constraints, such as due process, equal protection, and the like.
The Supreme Court ultimately disagreed, ruling in a 5-4 decision that the Second Amendment does protect an individual’s right to own firearms independently of militia service. This decision marked a pivotal shift in constitutional interpretation, confirming the right to personal firearm ownership across the United States and setting a precedent in Second Amendment jurisprudence.
District of Columbia v. Heller remains a significant case in the debate over firearm rights and regulations, underscoring ongoing divisions in interpretations of the Second Amendment.
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If she wins, she has not given any indication of her true intentions when she becomes #47. It won’t take long for her to carry on Biden’s policies which she admitted she didn’t have any thought that she would change any of his policies when she wins. Hold on to your wallets, out way of life will be changed when inflation continues to climb because of her promise to give new benefits to new home buyers of $25,000 and other perks that we Americans will be stuck paying for. I hope, it’s election day and I am waiting as most Republican voters will, Trump will win, we won’t see that trillions of new spending she will propose. That’s our only hope.
All it takes is one election to reverse what the court has decided… Just one liberal appointment and the Second Amendment is dead as it was intended by the founders. That is precisely why I get so upset with the gun owners that fail to register and vote! If they, and the Christians that also fail to register and vote for whatever reason, (they apparently feel that God doesn’t want them to participate in political life, he does not, but rather has explicitly stated in the Bible that they should be participating and voting for those that uphold the principles he laid out for them in the Bible!). If just one of the more conservative judges on the Court retires and is replaced by a liberal judge nominated by the Democratic administration, you can kiss your rights goodbye and you will have no one to blame other than yourselves, (those that fail to vote!!!).
so very glad she (Harris) was not elected our 47th President