Kamala Harris claims that while her specific policy preferences may have changed over the years, her values are still the same. So what does this say about the value she places on the Fourth Amendment's protections against unreasonable searches?
As San Francisco's district attorney, Kamala Harris told legal gun owners in her community that authorities could “walk into” their homes to inspect whether they were storing their firearms properly under a new law she helped draft.
“We're going to require responsible behaviors among everybody in the community, and just because you legally possess a gun in the sanctity of your locked home doesn't mean that we're not going to walk into that home and check to see if you're being responsible and safe in the way you conduct your affairs,” Harris told a group of reporters in May 2007.
The remarks came during a press conference introducing legislation that Harris helped draft, which sought to impose penalties for gun owners who fail to store their firearms properly at home.
We already know what Harris thought about the right to keep and bear arms when she was District Attorney in San Francisco. In an amicus brief filed in support of Washington, D.C.'s handgun ban in early 2008, Harris maintained that the Second Amendment doesn't protect an individual right to possess or carry firearms. Harris and other progressive D.A.'s argued that a lower court erred when it ruled the handgun ban unconstitutional, writing that the decision “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.”
But Harris's contempt for our enumerated rights clearly doesn't stop with the right to keep and bear arms if she believed that the local government in San Francisco had the authority to enter locked homes to see how firearms were being stored.
Harris's campaign was asked by Fox News Digital about those comments, and received this word salad in response.
James Singer, a Harris campaign spokesperson, told Fox News Digital that a potential Harris administration would “uphold and defend the law and rights of Americans, including the Second Amendment.”
“The law in question, requiring sensible gun storage in homes, was upheld by Republican appointed judges in the ninth circuit and declined to be reviewed by the Supreme Court,” he added. “As Vice President Harris said on the debate stage, she is a gun owner who supports common-sense safety laws that Donald Trump opposes.”
It's true that the storage law in question was upheld by the Ninth Circuit, but what Singer leaves out is the fact that the Ninth Circuit has upheld almost every gun control law that's been challenged in the appellate court since Heller came down in 2008. And this particular ruling was one of many post-Heller cases where lower courts incorrectly engaged in an interest-balancing test rather than looking at the text, history, and tradition of the Second Amendment and the right to keep and bear arms.
The Ninth Circuit's decision also said nothing about the constitutionality of how Harris planned on enforcing the storage law. To the best of my knowledge, neither the San Francisco Police Department nor any official with the District Attorney's office ever tried to enter the homes of lawful gun owners to inspect how their firearms were stored, which would almost certainly have resulted in a lawsuit alleging a violation of the gun owner's Fourth Amendment rights.
Though Harris's values might lead her to believe otherwise, merely exercising your right to possess a firearm is not evidence of a crime, nor does it give law enforcement probable cause to enter your home without a warrant to see if an ordinance is being followed.
Harris's threats to legal gun owners in San Francisco is yet another example of the contempt and disdain she has for our constitutionally protected rights and those of us who exercise them. When the Harris campaign says she'll uphold and defend the Second Amendment rights of Americans, they're leaving out the not-so-minor detail that she has said that right doesn't include the ability to possess or carry firearms; relegating the right to keep and bear arms only to service in a militia.
In her long political career, Harris has repeatedly promoted and promulgated infringements on our right to keep and bear arms without ever declaring a particular gun control policy goes too far. She has derided gun owners, gun shows, the right to keep, and the right to carry, but there's not a single soundbite of her ever finding fault with a proposal from groups like Everytown or Brady. The values she's demonstrated over the years have been in lockstep with the gun control lobby. When she says those values haven't changed, I believe her. It's those values that are the problem.
Find the original article in its entirety on Bearing Arms.
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