This week, we finally learned what kind of gun Kamala Harris owns. Or, at least, what brand. It’s a Glock.
Talking about that Glock and Tim Walz’s Beretta shotgun has been a significant part of the Harris campaign since the debate, including a hunting photo op and new gun owner group launch on Friday. I look at who they’re trying to target with that talk and why it might actually be working.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has been busy on guns as well. Contributing Writer Jake Fogleman details the questions and comments from the justices at Tuesday’s oral arguments that indicate the Court is more receptive to the ATF’s “ghost gun” kit ban than it was to the bump stock ban.
Plus, The Bulwark’s Tim Miller joins the podcast to give his take on how Harris’s Glock talk impacts the race. And I give a little recap of my most recent trip to shoot some sporting clays.
Analysis: Who Harris’s Gun Messaging is Targeting and Why it Might be Working [Member Exclusive]
By Stephen Gutowski
“It’s the double-haters and the conflicted partisans.”
That’s what Marquette pollster Charles Franklin told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Thursday about who is left to decide the election in Wisconsin. It’s also the group Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are trying to hit with their latest closing argument on guns.
And there’s some evidence it might be working.
While the race has mostly stagnated on gun policy, with Trump and Harris sticking closely to the platforms each party has run on since the start. Harris, like Joe Biden before her, is pushing for universal background checks, a “red flag” law, and an “assault weapons” ban. Trump is a bit lighter on policy promises but has said he’ll undo all of Biden’s executive gun action and push for national concealed carry reciprocity.
But the lack of policy shakeups doesn’t mean nothing about guns in the 2024 race has changed. Most notably, Harris has taken to talking a lot about her own gun as a way to counter Trump’s attacks on her record of backing different confiscation efforts throughout her career.
“This business about taking everyone’s guns away; Tim Walz and I are both gun owners,” Harris said at the debate. “We’re not taking anyone’s guns away.”
Pointing to her personal ownership of a handgun, which she’s since revealed is a Glock, has been her main message on guns ever since. She even told Oprah Winfrey, “If somebody breaks in my house, they’re getting shot” at a recent campaign event.
On Sunday, Walz took his shot at the same move in the form of a hunting photo op. That event was used to launch “Hunters and Anglers for Harris-Walz.” Much like Gun Owners for Trump, the effort doesn’t appear to have any real organizational heft to it. It’s just a way of trying to signal a certain group of voters that it’s ok to vote for Harris.
In fact, a campaign staffer literally told Outdoor Life they’re hoping to create a “permission structure for those who simply love to hunt, fish, and be outside, to join the Harris-Walz campaign.”
What all this clearly isn’t is an effort to persuade voters who list gun rights near the top of their priority list. Otherwise, Harris would have moved further to the center on the issue and ditched at least the sale ban on America’s most popular rifle after dropping her support for forcing owners to sell them to the government. Instead, she’s trying to thread a needle to keep gun-control activists energized to support her without scaring off the remaining voters up for grabs.
Looking through the polling it isn’t hard to see why the Harris Campaign is going this route.
The Marquette poll Charles Franklin was commenting on shows there are very few undecided voters left. The company found 12 percent of Wisconsin voters hadn’t made up their minds when Biden was still in the race. The number is less than half that now.
Those remaining undecideds are mostly Independents and moderate Republicans. Harris wants to peel those voters off. Or, at the very least, convince them she’s not as radical as she might seem and it’s ok to stay home rather than turn out to vote for Trump. Talking about how she and Walz own guns and don’t want to take them from anybody is part of that strategy.
Of course, it’s not the only part of it. Harris has tried to present a more moderate position on almost every issue since she took over the top of the ticket. She’s also elevated former Republicans, most notably Liz Cheney, as part of her campaign and said she plans to put one in her cabinet if elected.
It’s difficult to separate those efforts and judge which are having the biggest effect. The polling that looks at the sort of undecideds at play in Wisconsin doesn’t provide us any granular data on that point. However, it does indicate the overall Harris effort may be working.
In the latest New York Times poll, Harris has increased her support among Republicans by four points. It only jumped from five to nine points, but that may be all she needs in such a close race. The poll also found the remaining undecideds are leaning more toward Harris than Trump, a reversal from the previous poll.
Additionally, a new poll shows Harris is performing well with voters who supported Niki Haley during her primary run against Trump. The survey of 781 registered Republicans and independents that Dem-leaning pollster Blueprint conducted for The Bulwark found Trump has only won over about 45 percent of those voters, while Harris has grabbed 36 percent.
It would be better if we had a lot more polling on this point, and if it tested the Harris gun message in particular. But these are the sorts of voters Marquette is finding are among the few who haven’t backed a candidate yet, and Harris seems to be peeling some off.
Polling is hard in the best of circumstances. It’s not meant to be a perfect predictor. It only gets harder the further you try to drill down into the crosstabs and suss out which unpolled factor is creating movement. Still, it’s better than mere anecdotes and likely the best we’re going to get before election day actually arrives.
It also fits logically with what we know. Gun policy isn’t a top issue for most voters. Most who do have it at the top of their priorities have probably already made up their mind. But the vast majority of voters still think it is an important issue, the contrast between the candidates is stark, and the remaining undecideds seem to be Independents and Republicans unsure about Trump–a group Harris has made some inroads with.
Whoever wins the race to define Harris on guns could win the entire race.
If the Harris Campaign can convince the tiny slice of undecided voters left that she’s just a gun owner looking for “common sense” reforms, that may get her across the finish line. If the Trump Campaign, or the NRA for that matter, can convince them she’s a gun-grabbing radical, that could swing the election just enough in his direction.
Podcast: Does Kamala’s Glock Matter? (Ft. The Bulwark’s Tim Miller) [Member Early Access]
By Stephen Gutowski
This week, we’re taking a closer look at Kamala Harris’s recent gun messaging.
That’s why we have Tim Miller of The Bulwark on the show. He’s a Republican strategist turned Never Trumper who wants Harris to win but isn’t afraid to be honest about whether her campaign is going in a direction that makes sense. On her recent turn to talking about owning a handgun, he argued it’s a “CYA” move designed to reassure moderate swing voters she won’t take their guns.
He argued Democrats are being too defensive on gun policy. Miller said he thinks Harris could benefit from pushing other gun restrictions that poll well, like those targeting adults under 21. But he said the campaign’s priority now seems to be not pushing away moderate or center-right voters more than pursuing left-leaning ones.
Miller said the Trump Campaign is making a similar calculation. Beyond saying Harris wants to take everyone’s guns, Trump has been mostly quiet on guns. Miller said he’s made the reasonable calculation that most gun voters are probably already backing him, and he’s trying not to alienate voters who are less enthusiastic about guns.
Ultimately, he said Harris isn’t really trying to persuade committed gun voters with talk of her Glock; otherwise, she’d probably move more to the center on gun policy. Instead, she’s just hoping to convince those on the fence that she’s not as radical as Trump or her own policy record might suggest.
You can listen to the show on your favorite podcasting app or by clicking here. Video of the episode is available on our YouTube channel. An auto-generated transcript is available here. Reload Members get access on Sunday, as always. Everyone else can listen on Monday.
A free 30-day trial of The Dispatch is available here.
Plus, Contributing writer Jake Fogleman and I recap how oral arguments over the ATF’s reclassification of unfinished firearms parts kits went this week before the Supreme Court. We also discuss the justices’ decision to take up the case over Mexico’s lawsuit against the American gun industry later this term. Then, we turn to the politics behind Kamala Harris’ decision to reveal that she owns a Glock handgun. Finally, we wrap up with a brief update on the grassroots movement to repeal Massachusetts’ new omnibus gun control law via the ballot and a discussion of The Reload’s reporting being cited in other national outlets.
Fun with Clays
I was lucky enough to get some time in at the range last weekend. And not just shooting at paper, either! I went out to Bull Run Shooting Center with my lovely girlfriend and some friends to shoot some reactive targets.
We did the sporting clay course. We ended up shooting somewhere around 350 clays. It has been a while since I’ve gone skeet or trap shooting. So, there were plenty of misses.
But there were plenty of double breaks, too!
My favorite stations were the one with the rabbit and the one where the clays converged in flight, so it was possible to hit them both with one shot. I did that several times, and I could’ve kept shooting that setup all day long. It’s just so fun.
Overall, we had a great outing, and it seemed to bring good luck to my Phils since they won game four shortly afterward. I suppose I should’ve gone again the morning of game five…
Analysis: VanDerStok Oral Arguments Went Well for the ATF [Member Exclusive]
By Jake Fogleman
For the second time in less than a year, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case testing the ATF’s power to reinterpret existing federal firearms law. This time, the government seemed to find a more receptive audience.
On Tuesday, the nine justices presided over nearly an hour and a half of questioning in the case Garland v. VanDerStok. They probed the attorneys on both sides of the issue to determine if the ATF acted lawfully when, in 2022, at the direction of President Joe Biden in a bid to crack down on “ghost guns,” it reinterpreted the definition of a “firearm” under the Gun Control Act of 1968 to include unfinished firearms parts kits.
In many ways, the case is similar to the dispute over the Trump Administration’s ban on bump stocks in Cargill v. Garland. That rule involved the ATF similarly reinterpreting the 1934 National Firearms Act’s definition of “machinegun” to cover the targeted devices without an act of Congress. The federal government’s arguments in that case were met with a considerable amount of skepticism from the Court’s conservative justices during oral arguments back in February. And those same justices ultimately struck down the ATF’s rule as an unlawful exercise of agency power with a 6-3 decision in June.
Unlike in Cargill, however, at least some of the conservative justices this week seemed inclined to approve the ATF’s latest rule change.
For instance, Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s remarks seemed to tip her hand a bit at times, particularly following an exchange between Justice Samuel Alito and Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar.
“Here’s a blank pad, and here’s a pen, alright? Is this a grocery list?” Alito asked. “I put out on a counter some eggs, some chopped-up ham, some chopped-up pepper, and onions. Is that a western omelet?”
Prelogar retorted that in each of those examples, unlike the ATF’s rule, the constituent parts listed had other uses than just creating the completed object. Unfinished gun parts, on the other hand, serve only to construct a fully-functional firearm by her account. Then, Barrett chimed in with a hypothetical of her own that seemed to push back on Alito’s characterization of the kits.
“Would your answer change if you ordered it from HelloFresh and you got a kit, and it was like turkey chili, but all of the ingredients are in the kit?” she asked.
“Yes. And I think that that presses on the more apt analogy here, which is that we are not suggesting that scattered components that might have some entirely separate and distinct function could be aggregated and called a weapon in the absence of this kind of evidence that that is their intended purpose and function,” Prelogar said. “But, if you bought, you know, from Trader Joe’s some omelet-making kit that had all of the ingredients to make the omelet and maybe included whatever you would need to start the fire in order to cook the omelet and had all of that objective indication that that’s what’s being marketed and sold, we would recognize that for what it is.”
Barrett also had some of the toughest questions for Peter Patterson, the attorney representing those challenging the rule, during his portion of oral arguments. Patterson’s stated position was essentially that the ATF’s current rule unlawfully exceeds the bounds of the Gun Control Act and that the agency’s prior standard for determining when a part moved from unfinished to a regulated firearm, the so-called critical machining operations test, was both lawful and preferable.
Barrett, however, demurred at this suggestion.
“But it doesn’t appear in the statute,” Justice Barrett said. “It seems a little made up, right, the critical machining test?”
In addition to Justice Barrett, Chief Justice John Roberts also gave some indications that might concern gun-rights advocates hoping to see the ATF’s rule struck down. He didn’t provide much in the way of challenging questions to the Solicitor General during her portion of the argument. However, he did take the opportunity to cast doubt on the legitimate use cases of unfinished firearms receivers–outside of simply circumventing the GCA’s requirements–in an exchange with Patterson.
“What is the purpose of selling a receiver without the holes drilled in it?” the Chief Justice asked. “Well, I mean, drilling a hole or two, I would think, doesn’t give the same sort of reward that you get from working on your car on the weekends.”
Though skepticism over the legitimate appeal of unfinished firearm parts being available for hobbyists might be less relevant to the merits of the case than statutory interpretation, Roberts’ decision to press this point specifically with Patterson and nowhere else, at the very least, suggests he’s sensitive to the government’s position on the practical concerns with the proliferation of so-called ghost guns.
Finally, Justice Brett Kavanaugh indicated he might also be amenable to the ATF’s interpretation.
“Your statutory interpretation has force,” he told the Solicitor General at one point of the argument.
While he did voice some concern over well-meaning defendants ignorant of the law being swept into criminal prosecution by the ATF’s rule change, he seemed mostly satisfied by the Solicitor General’s assurances that prosecutions under the rule are focused on “willful” violators.
“Take the hypothetical — you truly believe you’re not violating the law, could you be charged under that provision?” Kavanaugh asked.
“We think that there is a lot of protection for manufacturers who are seeking to comply with the law in good faith,” Prelogar responded in part after admitting somebody could only theoretically be charged without willful intent under one part of the law and argued the government wouldn’t pursue such cases. “ATF is not trying to hide the ball here. The point of the agency is not a game of gotcha to try to criminally prosecute people. ”
“Okay,” Kavanaugh told Prelogar at the end of their exchange. “That’s helpful.”
Attempting to make definite predictions about the outcomes of Supreme Court cases based on the tenor of oral arguments alone can be a perilous endeavor. But the openness with which a handful of conservative justices treated the ATF’s position this time around suggests VanDerStok has the potential to go a different way than Cargill.
With all three of the liberal justices likely to be on the side of the agency’s authority, as indicated by their questioning being overwhelmingly skeptical of plaintiffs and their voting history in previous gun cases, all it would take is two of the six conservatives crossing over for the Biden Administration’s ghost gun rule to stand.
That’s it for now.
I’ll talk to you all again soon.
Thanks,
Stephen Gutowski
Founder
The Reload
