Gun violence is likely to be one of the topics that Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump will discuss during their first debate on September 10, particularly after the mass shooting at Apalachee High School in Georgia brought the issue back to the forefront of the presidential race. 

In preparation for the event, we have put together this primer on the candidates’ records and what each might try to do regarding guns if they’re elected in November.

Kamala Harris’s Approach

Harris has made the prevention of gun violence a key focus of her campaign. As we’ve reported, the Democratic nominee has backed gun safety regulations throughout her political career, and she has taken a prominent role in the Biden administration’s gun policy work. 

Specifically, since its launch in September 2023, Harris has overseen the first White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, intended to coordinate federal efforts. Under Harris’s leadership, the office has worked to enhance background checks for prospective gun buyers who are under 21 and accelerate the implementation of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the most significant gun safety legislation in nearly 30 years, signed by President Joe Biden in 2022.

Earlier this year, Harris also announced the creation of a resource center to support the carrying out of Extreme Risk Protection Order laws. ERPOs, more commonly known as red flag laws, are meant to temporarily disarm people deemed to be a danger to themselves or others. 

Harris has received endorsements from all of the major gun reform organizations, including March For Our Lives, Giffords, and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

Brady’s president, Kris Brown, pointed out that Harris’s running mate, Governor Tim Walz, has approved ERPOs and other gun safety laws in Minnesota, and Brown believes he will work to implement similar policies at the federal level. “Gun safety is truly on the ballot this November,” she said.

As commander in chief, Harris would likely push for expanding background checks for all gun purchases and reinstating the federal ban on assault weapons. She could also pursue tougher regulations on ghost guns, large-capacity ammunition magazines, and bump stocks. 

However, Josh Horwitz, co-director of the Center for Gun Violence Solutions, said the scope of Harris’s potential success will depend on the composition of Congress and whether lawmakers can overcome a potential filibuster. 

“Thinking through a Harris-Walsh administration, it really depends on what happens in Congress,” Horwitz said. “If the Democrats get both houses in Congress, I would expect to see a little more aggressive policy. But with the Senate basically running on 60 votes — unless we get a major change in the Senate — I don’t see a big deviation from the Biden policies.”

Donald Trump’s Approach

Trump has taken a different stance on guns by positioning himself as a staunch defender of the Second Amendment and aligning with the interests of gun lobbying groups like the National Rifle Association. 

The NRA, the most prominent gun rights organization in the United States, officially endorsed Trump during its annual convention in Dallas in May, where Trump was a keynote speaker. On the same day, Trump’s campaign announced the creation of a “Gun Owners for Trump” coalition, signaling his intent to appeal strongly to gun rights supporters. 

During his term as president, Trump’s record on guns was mixed. He reversed some Obama-era policies that restricted gun ownership, including an executive order meant to make it harder for people with mental illness to buy guns. 

However, after a gunman armed with bump stocks killed 58 people at the 2017 Route 91 music festival in Las Vegas, Trump directed the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to reclassify the devices as machine guns, effectively banning them (the Supreme Court overturned part of that ban in June). 

With some gun rights efforts, Trump fell short. As The Trace reported in 2021, Trump never followed through on his promise to ban gun-free zones, and when presented with an opportunity to push a national concealed-carry law, Trump rejected it.

Still, if reelected, experts expect Trump to resist new restrictions on gun ownership. He would likely support measures to expand concealed-carry rights, including allowing permit holders to carry their firearms across state lines without licensing. 

“I think that [with] anything that pertains to regulation of the gun industry, that is within presidential powers, he will have a hands-off kind of approach,” said Daniel Webster, former head of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions and a longtime gun policy researcher.

The three judges Trump nominated to the Supreme Court — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett — have already had long-lasting implications for gun regulation. One of the candidate’s senior advisors has said that if Trump returns to the White House, he plans to appoint more federal judges who interpret the Second Amendment broadly.

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Trump could also attempt to dismantle federal programs related to gun violence research and prevention and defund or significantly reduce funding for the ATF. Some Republican lawmakers have proposed legislation to abolish the ATF, a move that Trump might support. Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for a second Trump administration, proposes moving the ATF back to the Treasury Department, where it resided until 2003, when it moved to the Justice Department. Under the Treasury, the ATF is likely to be defunded and lose some of its law enforcement and oversight authority.

Like Harris, Trump may struggle to get enough votes in Congress to turn his proposals into law. “As a result, I think both of these candidates will be left to issue executive orders and take executive action on guns as being the primary space where they can make a difference,” said Adam Winkler, a constitutional law expert who authored “Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America.”

President Biden used executive actions to establish regulations on ghost guns and pistol-stabilizing braces, direct the ATF to publish annual reports on gun trafficking, and authorize a crackdown on gun stores that willfully violate the law, resulting in an exponential rise in the revocation of gun dealer licenses.

Trump “would probably seek to undo some of the executive actions and executive orders that President Biden has put in place,” Winkler said. “For Harris, the challenge there is that the Biden administration has already done probably most of what it can do through executive action.”

Trace senior news writer Jennifer Mascia contributed to this story.

Alma Beauvais
As The Trace’s first-ever editorial assistant, Alma helps the team stay organized. Prior to joining the Trace, she worked as a freelance journalist for The Nation and The West Georgian, and fact checked stories for magazine articles and books. She interned at The Miami Herald and The Nation. She has also written about her home country of Haiti as a contributing writer for the Pulitzer Center and The Haitian Times. She holds a master’s degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.