The first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris got heated over whether the Democrat would try to confiscate firearms if elected.
On Tuesday night, Trump accused Harris of wanting to take Americans’ guns away at multiple points during the debate. She made a point of responding to those accusations.
“She has a plan to confiscate everybody’s gun,” Trump said.
“This business about taking everyone’s guns away; Tim Walz and I are both gun owners. We’re not taking anyone’s guns away,” Harris responded a few minutes later. “So, stop with the continuous lying about this stuff.”
The exchange, which lasted only a few seconds of the two-hour debate, was the most substantive on the issue of firearms in any debate during this election season. The issue did not come up at all in the debate between Trump and President Joe Biden or the Republican primary debates, which Trump skipped. As they have all cycle, guns took a back seat to many other issues despite a high-profile shooting at a Georgia high school last week.
ABC News moderator Linsey Davis first brought Harris’s record on gun confiscation into the debate. As part of a broader question about several position changes, she brought up the Harris campaign’s walk back of her 2019 support for a mandatory buyback of so-called assault weapons.
“You wanted mandatory buybacks for assault weapons. Now your campaign says you don’t,” Davis said before asking Harris why so many of her policy positions had changed.
Harris did not directly address the buyback part of Davis’s question, but Trump claimed, “She wants to confiscate your guns” in his follow-up. The pair revisited the issue again toward the end of the debate when Harris insisted she, as a gun owner, wouldn’t take people’s guns away.
The debate stems from Harris’s failed 2019 presidential bid when she was one of several Democratic primary candidates who backed a forced buyback of at least some weapons. Her proposal centered on making owners sell their assault weapons, generally defined as semi-automatic firearms capable of accepting detachable magazines and featuring certain banned features–often including popular rifles like the AR-15.
“We have to have a buyback program, and I support a mandatory gun buyback program,” she said at an October 2019 forum.
However, shortly after she took over the top of the Democratic ticket, her campaign said she no longer supported that position.
“Correct, the VP will not push for a mandatory buy back as president,” Lauren Hitt, a Harris spokesperson, told The Reload in July. “She has expressed support for red flag laws, universal background checks and an assault weapons ban.”
Harris also talked about owning a gun back during her 2019 campaign.
“I am a gun owner, and I own a gun for probably the reason a lot of people do – for personal safety,” she said during an April 2019 event. “I was a career prosecutor.”
CNN reported at the time that a Harris aide told them Harris owns a handgun and had for years. The Harris Campaign did not respond to a Reload request for comment on what kind of handgun she owns.
In 2024, Harris has instead focused on a sales ban on the guns in question. She’s also backed universal background checks and “Red Flag” laws, though she’s yet to provide specific details on those proposals. However, she has made them a prominent part of her party’s platform and her stump speeches.
“In this election, many other fundamental freedoms are at stake,” Harris said during her DNC acceptance speech. “The freedom to live safe from gun violence in our schools, communities, and places of worship.”
Trump has taken a different approach. While he hasn’t changed positions on gun policy, he has been noticeably quiet on the issue. Republicans removed gun-rights policy promises from their 2024 platform, and Trump completely avoided the issue during his RNC acceptance speech.
The Harris Campaign called for a second debate to take place in October, according to Reuters, but the two sides haven’t agreed to an event yet.
