President Joe Biden just ended his reelection campaign and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris. The move pushes the Democratic ticket further left on gun policy.
On Sunday, President Biden announced he would no longer seek reelection. He followed up that announcement by endorsing his running mate to take over the reins of the 2024 campaign.
“While it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term,” he tweeted.
“Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year,” he followed up in a second post. “Democrats — it’s time to come together and beat Trump. Let’s do this.”
The move comes as Biden has consistently trailed former President Donald Trump in polling all year, with the latter’s modest lead reaching new highs in the wake of an assassination attempt against him and his speech to the RNC. It will likely shake up the race, which has remained stubbornly stable despite a parade of major developments on either side. It also risks pushing the Democratic ticket’s position on gun policy further away from moderates and swing voters.
The Biden Administration, with the backing of Harris, has pursued an aggressive effort to restrict firearms through legislation and executive action. Biden signed new restrictions for 18-to-20-year 20-year-olds and people convicted of assaulting dating partners as part of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act in the wake of the 2022 Uvalde shooting. He also created a new executive office for gun violence prevention. He instituted a series of ATF rules banning pistol-braced guns and “ghost gun” kits, as well as instituting new restrictions on used gun sales.
Americans have been unsatisfied with Biden’s approach to gun policy, consistently giving him a lower approval rating on the issue than his overall rating.
Still, Biden ran on enacting a new “assault weapons” ban, which would block the sale of popular firearms like the AR-15. That put him in the most aggressive posture on the issue since at least Al Gore’s 2000 campaign.
Harris has the potential to push things even further. During the 2020 primary, both Biden and Harris supported a ban on AR-15s and an effort to buy them back. However, Harris went further and backed a plan to force Americans to sell their guns to the government.
The two even clashed over a Harris proposal to use executive action to ban so-called assault weapons.
“Upon being elected, I will give the United States Congress a hundred days to get their act together and have the courage to pass reasonable gun safety laws,” Harris said during an April 2019 CNN town hall. “If they fail to do it, then I will take executive action.”
“You have no constitutional authority to issue that executive order, the ones they’re talking about. ‘I’m going to eliminate assault weapons’ — can’t do it by executive order any more than Trump can do the things he’s saying he can do by executive order,” Biden responded in an August 2019 press conference.
The Biden Administration has implemented new gun restrictions but hasn’t tried to ban AR-15s using federal rulemaking as Harris suggested.
Trump’s latest vice presidential pick, necessary after Mike Pence ran against him then refused to endorse him, is further to his right on guns. Ohio Senator JD Vance has racked up a perfect record of backing pro-gun legislation while opposing gun-control bills during the year and a half he’s been in office. He’s even expressed support for disbanding the ATF.
However, Trump and the Republican party have seemingly backed away from guns in recent weeks. The party stripped its platform of previous gun policy promises, the RNC did not feature a speaker from any gun-rights group, and Trump didn’t mention gun rights once during his record-long closing remarks.
It’s unclear whether Harris will change the campaign’s current course on gun policy if and when she becomes the Democratic nominee. It’s not clear how the Trump Campaign might respond either.
Biden said he plans to explain more of his reasoning in the coming days.
“I will speak to the National later this week in more detail about my decision,” Biden said.
