After President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the 2024 presidential race, activists on both sides of the gun issue have begun to weigh in on Vice President Kamala Harris’s likely ascension to the top of the Democratic ticket.
Some of the nation’s most influential gun violence prevention groups have rallied behind Harris, while gun rights advocates have painted her as a radical. The divergent reactions reflect Harris’s record on guns after a two-decade-long political career that elevated her from a California prosecutor to first in the presidential line of succession.
Harris, who oversees the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, has been a prominent voice for the Biden administration’s gun policy.
At her first campaign rally in Wisconsin on July 23, Harris signaled that reducing gun violence would be a theme of her bid, expressing support for policies long advocated by gun reform groups. “We, who believe that every person should have the freedom to live safe from the terror of gun violence, will finally pass red flag laws, universal background checks, and an assault weapons ban,” she said.
Gun violence prevention advocates, an increasingly important component of the Democratic coalition, generally view Harris as a strong ally who would continue pushing for reforms as Biden’s successor. Giffords, the organization founded by former U.S. Representative Gabby Giffords, a shooting survivor, and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence — two of the nation’s oldest gun reform groups — were among the first to endorse her.
“We can’t afford a future where we do not fight off this preventable epidemic with every tool we have,” Brady President Kris Brown said in a statement. “This November, our lives are on the ballot. We must vote for Kamala Harris to free America from gun violence.”
The endorsements from Brady and Giffords were followed by those of Everytown, the Community Justice Action Fund, and the Newtown Action Alliance, among others. (Through its nonpolitical arm, Everytown provides grants to The Trace. You can find our donor transparency policy here, and our editorial independence policy here.)
March For Our Lives — a youth-led group founded by survivors of the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida — has also thrown its weight behind Harris, marking the organization’s first-ever political endorsement.
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Meanwhile, groups on the other side of the gun debate were quick to pan Harris’s candidacy.
On X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter, the National Rifle Association posted a photo of Democratic politicians with Harris in the fore. “Now that President Biden has been shoved out of the race, make no mistake — whoever the elites choose will continue Biden’s radical gun control agenda,” the post said.
The Firearms Policy Coalition — an organization that’s even more strident than the NRA — has been blasting Harris with expletives on social media. In one post, the group called her an “authoritarian,” and wrote that “her policy preferences are so insane they make Joe Biden’s look moderate.”
Another prominent pro-gun group, Gun Owners of America, called her a “gun-grabber.”
Harris has been a leading messenger on gun policy since the early days of the Biden administration, eventually taking on the prominent role of overseeing the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention. The president established the office in September 2023 to coordinate federal efforts against gun violence.
In March, during a visit to the site of the Parkland school shooting, Harris announced the launch of a national center to help increase the effectiveness of Extreme Risk Protection Order laws, more commonly known as red flag laws. She also helped roll out the Biden administration’s plan to crack down on unlicensed gun dealers and increase the number of guns subject to background checks.
Harris could draw on the Biden administration’s gun violence prevention record to boost her campaign. In 2022, the president signed the nation’s first gun reform bill in three decades, the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which strengthened background checks, provided funding for states to implement red flag laws, and sought to keep guns out of the hands of people who abused their dating partners.
Biden has also issued executive orders to crack down on untraceable ghost guns, support safer firearm storage, and restrict firearm modification devices like pistol braces. In 2022, he successfully nominated Steven Dettelbach to become the first Senate-confirmed director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in seven years.
For Harris, gun violence was a central issue long before her time as vice president.
During her first campaign to be San Francisco’s top prosecutor in 2003, she promised to take a tougher track on gun crimes. While in office, she opposed pretrial release for people charged with gun crimes and emphasized domestic violence cases. She also worked with then-San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom on some of the strictest local gun regulations in the country.
In 2008, as the U.S. Supreme Court was considering the landmark case D.C. v. Heller, Harris led a group of prosecutors that unsuccessfully tried to convince the justices to reject a broad right to gun ownership, arguing that it would endanger state and local firearm laws.
Harris was elected California attorney general in 2010 and continued pushing for stricter gun laws as she oversaw the largest state justice department in the country. She attempted to increase funding for a state database used to seize guns from people legally prohibited from having them, lobbied for the nation’s third red flag law, and supported a measure intended to help connect bullet casings recovered at crime scenes to the guns they came from.
After her election to the U.S. Senate in 2016, Harris co-sponsored bills to enact universal background checks, ban assault weapons, and increase oversight of federally licensed gun dealers.
Harris ran to the left of Biden on guns during her bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, pursuing a platform that included a mandatory buyback of assault weapons. But Harris has said she supports responsible gun ownership and even owns a gun for personal protection.
“We are being offered a false choice,” Harris told reporters in 2019. “You’re either in favor of the Second Amendment or you want to take everyone’s guns away. It’s a false choice that is born out of a lack of courage from leaders who must recognize and agree that there are some practical solutions to what is a clear problem in our country.”
