Kamala Harris Says She Owns A Gun “For Personal Safety”

Gun control supporter is one of six Democratic presidential candidates to own a firearm.

Sen. Kamala Harris has called for banning assault weapons and requiring universal background checks, and made passionate calls for action by Congress on gun control. But she also owns a gun herself, she said Thursday.

“I am a gun owner, and I own a gun for probably the reason a lot of people do — for personal safety,” Harris told reporters in Iowa. “I was a career prosecutor.”

Her weapon is a handgun that she purchased years ago and keeps locked up, a Harris aide told CNN.

Gun control has been a big issue for Harris in her career as San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general. In San Francisco, she fought for stricter penalties for gun crimes and filed a Supreme Court amicus brief in support of Washington, D.C.’s ban on most personal handgun ownership.

It’s also something Harris talks about regularly on the campaign trail. At her widely-watched CNN town hall event in January, she said members of Congress should have been required to go into a locked room to see “the autopsy photographs of those babies” murdered at the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting.

But Harris also argued this week that there is room for both gun ownership and gun control.

“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,” she said.

A Washington Post survey of the candidates found that five other Democratic candidates own guns — South Bend, Indiana, mayor Pete Buttigieg; former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke; former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper; Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan; and former Maryland Rep. John Delaney — although some said they don’t use them.

The other Californian in the race, East Bay Rep. Eric Swalwell, has made gun control the central issue of his nascent campaign, calling for a federal buyback of all assault weapons. Swalwell does not own a gun, a spokesman said Friday. He did recently go shooting at the Alameda County Sheriff’s gun range, documenting his visit on social media.

It’s unlikely that Harris or the other Democrats’ gun ownership would win them that many votes of gun owners or Republicans, said John Donohue, a Stanford law professor who studies gun control.

“There’s no question that some gun owners could be moved by that,” he said. “But on the other hand, many of the people who would be moved by that will not be in her column for many other reasons.”

About 30 percent of American adults own a gun, according to a Pew Research Center study, and polls have shown wide support for stricter gun control laws.

Gun control advocates agree that there’s no contradiction between possessing a firearm and calling for tougher laws.

“There’s this misnomer that the NRA leadership likes to push that to be a (gun control) champion you have to oppose the Second Amendment,” said Shannon Watts, the founder of pro-gun control group Moms Demand Action. “That’s just not true.”

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