With both tickets now officially set for the Presidential election this November, gun voters will have a stark choice.
On Tuesday, Vice President Kamala Harris (D.) named Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D.) as her running mate to take on former President Donald Trump (R.) and Ohio Senator JD Vance (R.) in the 2024 election. Walz, a former Congressman turned Governor, has a nearly identical gun platform to one the Harris campaign has recently pivoted to.
“I am proud to announce that I’ve asked Tim Walz to be my running mate,” she announced in a social media post. “As a governor, a coach, a teacher, and a veteran, he’s delivered for working families like his. It’s great to have him on the team.”
Walz accepted the nomination in a post of his own.
“It is the honor of a lifetime to join Kamala Harris in this campaign,” he wrote. “I’m all in.”
The selection of Walz doubles down on Harris’s progressive policy background, including on gun issues. Despite having narrow Democratic majorities in the state, Walz has been successful in signing progressive priorities into law, including universal free school lunches, paid family leave, recreational marijuana legalization, and providing driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants. He also reversed course on the issue of gun rights during his time in the Governor’s mansion by going from an NRA “A” rating to signing a series of new gun restrictions.
While a member of Congress between 2006 and 2018, Walz actively opposed new gun-control laws. He often touted his background as a veteran, hunter, and gun owner to appeal to gun-rights voters and was endorsed by the National Rifle Association as recently as 2016. However, after deciding to run for Governor and in the aftermath of the Parkland shooting in 2018, Walz began to change his tune. He endorsed an “assault weapon” ban for the first time that year. He also highlighted his break with the NRA by touting his first “F” grade from the group and claiming he donated the organization’s past contributions to charity, according to the Minnesota Star Tribune.
“The world’s changed,” Walz told the paper. “I’ve changed.”
Since being elected, he has continued to push for an assault weapon ban without success. However, he has signed several other gun-control measures into law. Most notably, Walz enacted universal background checks and a so-called red flag law just last year. Those three policies are at the core of Harris’s messaging on guns since her campaign recently walked back her attempts to push for a mandatory buyback of AR-15s and similar firearms.
The NRA blasted Harris’s selection of Walz and his shift in favor of gun restrictions.
“Tim Walz is a political chameleon – changing his positions to further his own personal agenda,” Randy Kozuch, executive director of the group’s Institute for Legislative Action, said in a statement. “In Congress, Walz purported to be a friend of gun owners to receive their support in his rural Minnesota district. Once he had his eyes set on other offices, he sold out law-abiding Minnesotans and promoted a radical gun control agenda that emboldened criminals and left everyday citizens defenseless. Kamala Harris and Tim Walz cannot be trusted to defend freedom and our Constitutional rights.”
Gun-control groups, meanwhile, celebrated the pick and immediately endorsed Walz shortly after he was announced.
“We are excited to endorse Tim Walz for Vice President,” the group Everytown for Gun Safety posted on Twiter. “He has a proven record of putting our safety first and working for a future free from gun violence.”
“Tim Walz is a gun safety champion who can bridge the divide, and he’s been a bold leader as Governor when he made the courageous and principled decision to give back the NRA’s contributions after the shooting in Parkland,” David Hogg, Co-Founder of March For Our Lives Action Fund, said in a statement. “We’re beyond excited to get to work to help put the Harris-Walz ticket in the White House.”
The newly minted Harris-Walz ticket will stand in heavy contrast to the gun policy on offer from the Trump-Vance ticket. Trump has been endorsed by the NRA for the third time and has already spoken to the group’s members twice on the campaign trail this year. Vance has also been endorsed by the gun-rights group, and his limited legislative record on guns is further to the right than Trump’s.
At the same time, the Republican ticket has thus far sought to downplay the salience of gun policy. The party stripped its platform of all gun policy promises, and Trump chose not to mention guns at all during his record-long closing remarks at the RNC. Trump has also repeatedly publicly complained during campaign events and interviews that “gun owners don’t vote.”
The Trump Campaign responded to Walz’s nomination by attacking the Minnesota Governor as a California liberal.
“It’s no surprise that San Francisco Liberal Kamala Harris wants West Coast wannabe Tim Walz as her running-mate – Walz has spent his governorship trying to reshape Minnesota in the image of the Golden State,” Karoline Leavitt, Trump Campaign Press Secretary, said in a statement. “If Walz won’t tell voters the truth, we will: just like Kamala Harris, Tim Walz is a dangerously liberal extremist, and the Harris-Walz California dream is every American’s nightmare.”
However, the Trump Campaign did not mention gun policy in its attacks on Walz.
