Kamala Harris has made her pick for VP and it serves to reinforce where she was already standing on gun policy. Perhaps more interestingly, though, is that would have been the case almost regardless of who she picked thanks to the party’s near uniformity on gun policy. Even more fascinating is the way her pick, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, is emblematic of the party’s shift on guns over time.
Contributing Writer Jake Fogleman examines Walz’s gun-control history and how it mirrors the rest of his part.
Also this week, Donald Trump broke his relative silence on guns. During a wide-ranging press conference, Trump said being shot with an AR-15 didn’t change his view on their legality. He also argued Harris would take away everyone’s guns, and he completely protected gun rights while president. I try to reason through whether that represents a shift in strategy or just some off hand comments.
Plus, David French is back on the podcast to give his take on all of this and make the case that gun voters shouldn’t go for Trump regardless.
Analysis: How Tim Walz Embodies the Democratic Party’s Trajectory on Guns [Member Exclusive]
By Jake Fogleman
Kamala Harris opted for a gun-rights supporter turned gun-control advocate as her Vice Presidential pick. His journey on guns mirrors that of Democrats as a whole.
Harris recently named Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D.) as her running mate, solidifying the Democratic ticket. It’s a pick that, much like Donald Trump’s selection of Ohio Senator JD Vance, represents a doubling down on the gun policies at the top of the ticket.
The conventional wisdom for Vice Presidential picks in previous cycles has traditionally been to bring a sense of balance to the ticket by reassuring voters with a candidate from the opposite wing of the party as its Presidential nominee.
Superficially, Walz fills the role. He brings a folksy, plain-speaking midwestern persona and a history of representing rural constituencies that contrasts with Harris’ brand of urban coastal progressivism. Yet, on policy substance, the two are cut from similar cloth.
In particular, the two champion essentially the same policies on guns. Ever since Harris’ campaign recently walked back her attempts to push for a mandatory buyback of AR-15s and similar firearms, she has repeatedly hammered home a policy platform centered around universal background checks, red flag laws, and an assault weapons ban while on the campaign trail. Since being elected Governor in 2018, Walz has supported the same basic policies. He signed bills enacting expanded background checks and a red flag system in Minnesota just last year. He has continued to push for an assault weapon ban in the state as well.
Walz mirroring of Harris’ gun-control platform appears to have been a feature, rather than a bug, in what made him a compelling VP candidate. After all, he and nearly every single other potential nominee rumored to be on Harris’ short list for Vice President had essentially the same track record of supporting the same basic gun-control policies. It is a remarkable degree of ideological unanimity, especially because the Harris campaign was intentional about fielding candidates who would generally be perceived as more moderate by the general electorate. In recent political memory, support for a ban on the most common rifle in the country wasn’t typically associated with moderate candidates.
Explicitly pro-gun Democrats, while never a majority coalition, nevertheless used to represent a substantial chunk of the American political landscape. Now, they’ve all but disappeared entirely. One need only look at the trajectory of National Rifle Association (NRA) endorsements by party over the last few election cycles to see how this shift has played out.
As recently as 2008, there were 67 Democrats elected to Congress with an A-rating from the NRA, according to a New York Times analysis. Another 13 were given a B-rating by the group that same year. However, those numbers dwindled every single election cycle thereafter, down from roughly a quarter of the party’s federal membership to the point where the sole NRA-endorsed Democrat by 2020 was Minnesota Congressman Collin Peterson, who ultimately lost his reelection bid to a Republican that year. In 2022, the group endorsed zero Democrats for the first time since at least the 1990s.
That won’t be the case this year, as the group announced its endorsement of incumbent Alaska Representative Mary Peltola (D.) earlier this month. Yet, she remains the only one in the last four years.
Tim Walz used to be one of those NRA Democrats. As a Congressman representing a rural Minnesota district from 2006 to 2018, Walz burnished his credentials as a military veteran and a hunter to oppose restrictive gun measures, earning him plaudits from multiple gun-rights groups. The NRA gave him A-ratings in each of his reelection races between 2010-2016 and donated to his campaigns. Meanwhile, media outlets like Guns and Ammo magazine also included him in lists ranking pro-gun politicians, including its “Top 20 Politicians for Gun Owners in 2016.”
By 2018, however, Walz—like most pro-gun Democrats—began to take a hard pivot. In the aftermath of the Parkland shooting, he publicly disavowed the NRA and began distancing himself from his previous opposition to gun-control measures. That shift only accelerated as he initiated his run for Governor.
“I’ve never been a member of the NRA, but I know many gun-owning Minnesotans still think of the organization as it was when I was growing up: as an advocate for sportsmen and women that held gun-safety classes,” he wrote in an op-ed in the Minneapolis Star Tribune that year. “Today, though, it’s the biggest single obstacle to passing the most basic measures to prevent gun violence in America — including common-sense solutions that the majority of NRA members support.”
Walz announced that he had donated $18,000 worth of NRA campaign contributions he previously received to charity and laid out his new gun-control platform.
“I’ll fight to pass universal background checks, which the Legislature has been unable or unwilling to do for too many years,” he wrote. “I’ll fight for the Gun Violence Protective Order that would let family members or police ask a court to keep someone from possessing firearms if that person poses a significant danger. We’ll fund public research into gun violence. We’ll have an honest discussion about mental health without stigmatizing people. And after listening hard to Minnesotans, I support an assault-weapons ban.”
Since that public break, he has never looked back in his advocacy for stricter gun laws.
At the same time that Walz and his fellow erstwhile blue-dog Democrats began pulling away from the NRA, the NRA also engaged in behavior that likely helped push away those that remained. It endorsed Donald Trump’s candidacy for President early on in 2016 and spent $50 million to help get him elected—far more than it had ever spent on a candidate before or since. Its media messaging also began morphing beyond simply gun politics and training into broad-spectrum conservative culture war issues, including immigration and vaccines. Furthermore, rumors of internal corruption and evidence of mismanagement by NRA leadership began slowly coming to light beginning in 2018, ultimately culminating in a New York jury finding that the group failed to safeguard its donor’s funds and longtime CEO Wayne LaPierre diverted millions worth of donations toward lavish personal expenses.
That likely made it much easier for vulnerable rural and swing-district Democrats to write off the group as a corrupt appendage of the Republican Party rather than the powerful, bipartisan interest group representing gun owners it had traditionally been. All the while, the incidence of high-profile mass shootings began to accelerate, creating pressure for moderate Democrats to sign onto gun-control measures pushed by the left flank of the party.
And so the push-pull of ideological polarization, the NRA’s evolution and fall from grace, as well as the energy injected into making guns a political focus for the Democratic party in recent cycles have all but solidified the partisan sorting of gun policy neatly across the two parties.
That’s why in less than eight years, Tim Walz went from being an NRA-endorsed Congressman to a gun-control bill-signing progressive Governor and ultimately becoming a Vice Presidential candidate vociferously lobbied for by none other than gun-control activist David Hogg. He rounds out a Democratic ticket alongside President Joe Biden’s gun-control czar who once publicly called for the mass confiscation of the most popular rifle in America. A ticket that represents the consensus position of the Democratic Party on guns for better or worse.
Podcast: New York Times Columnist David French on Gun Politics in the 2024 Election [Member Early Access]
By Stephen Gutowski
This week saw a lot of developments surrounding guns in the 2024 presidential election.
After walking back her support for a mandatory buyback of AR-15s and the like, Kamala Harris doubled down on her support for a slew of other gun restrictions by selecting Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her VP. Then Donald Trump broke his recent silence on guns by attacking Harris and doubling down on support for gun ownership.
So, we’ve got New York Times columnist David French back on the show to go over all of the developments. He said Harris is attempting to run away from what he called the “great awokening” of the 2020 Democratic primary, and he said Walz misled the public about having carried the guns he now wants to ban “in war.” But he also noted the gun policies she and Walz have now centered their campaign on are fairly mainstream for the most part, both within the Democratic party and even among general election voters.
He admitted that Donald Trump and Republicans are better on gun rights. However, he argued that didn’t justify voting for Trump over Harris because the latter is unlikely to be able to institute her gun policies given the most likely outcomes of the 2024 election. Similarly, he argued Harris was unlikely to be able to change the makeup of the Supreme Court during her first term since conservative justices probably won’t retire. He said he was more concerned about what Trump could do with the presidency’s power over national security than what Harris might be able to accomplish through legislative efforts.
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 here. Reload Members get access on Sunday, as always. Everyone else can listen starting Monday.
Claim your free 30-day trial at this week’s sponsor The Dispatch here!
Plus, Contributing Writer Jake Fogleman and I cover Kamala Harris’ VP pick and what it says about the ticket’s gun policy strategy. We then turn to Donald Trump’s latest attack on Harris for her gun control stances and why it stands out after months of silence on the issue. We also explain why the Fourth Circuit’s latest “assault weapon” ban ruling is the strongest candidate yet for Supreme Court review. Finally, we wrap up with a quick discussion of appeals courts continuing to struggle with the question of gun rights for felons, Mexico’s latest legal headwinds in its quest to sue US gun companies, and even break a little news about an upcoming NRA meeting.
Analysis: Is Trump Pivoting Back to Gun Voters? [Member Exclusive]
By Stephen Gutowski
Former President Donald Trump went after Vice President Kamala Harris on guns while burnishing his own credentials on Thursday.
During a lengthy press conference, Trump painted Harris as radical on guns. He painted himself as a protector of the Second Amendment. Those were his first remarks contrasting his position on gun control with Harris since she took over the top spot on the Democratic ticket a few weeks back.
Does that mean Trump has decided to change tact on gun politics as we barrel closer to November?
While Harris has kept the same focus on gun control during the early stages of her campaign that President Joe Biden had throughout his, Trump has de-emphasized the issue. He stripped a series of gun-rights promises from the Republican platform, didn’t invite a gun-rights speaker to the RNC, and didn’t mention gun policy at all during his record-long acceptance speech. So, seeing Trump go after Harris on guns and tout his own record is interesting–even if he did it by exaggerating both of their positions.
“She wants to take away everyone’s gun,” Trump said. “If you take away guns… can’t do it because people need guns for protection.”
“When I was president, I totally protected the guns, and I think it’s very important,” he followed up with later in the press conference. “When the bad guy walks in with a gun, you gotta have some way of protecting yourself.”
Trump often speaks in a stream-of-consciousness style, and there isn’t necessarily a strategy behind every desperate comment he makes. That much should be clear after nearly a decade of listening to Trump’s speeches.
Still, it was notable when he didn’t mention guns in his RNC acceptance speech. It’s notable he did mention it during Thursday’s press conference. Now, it was a reporter’s question that initially prompted Trump to talk about guns. So, he didn’t broach the subject himself. But he did go back to guns on his own later in the press conference.
He also shot down the idea that he might change his tune on guns after a would-be assassin shot him in the ear. When asked if he’d reconsider supporting a ban on AR-15s after being attacked with one, he said he wouldn’t.
All of that may reassure gun voters that Trump isn’t about to moderate his stance on guns. And there are some good reasons to think Trump may have recalculated how guns will impact the 2024 election.
For one, the race is much tighter now. If Trump’s comments were actually strategic rather than fleeting, they could represent a shift in how his campaign plans to approach the election. As Cam Edwards of Bearing Arms said on The Weekly Reload Podcast a few weeks back, Republicans shying away from gun politics was likely part of a calculation to reach a broader swath of more moderate voters in an attempt to expand their map of winnable states. Now that Harris has shot up in the polls and the realistic map of swing states has begun to narrow, the Trump Campaign may switch to a base turnout campaign.
Additionally, Harris felt the need to moderate on the issue. As part of a series of walkbacks her campaign rolled out since she became the nominee, they backed off her support for a mandatory buyback scheme for so-called assault weapons.
“The VP will not push for a mandatory buy back as president,” Lauren Hitt, a Harris spokesperson, told The Reload late last month.
Although, Harris has stuck by support for a ban on assault weapon sales as well as universal background checks and red flag laws. She’s even made sure to highlight those policies in nearly every single one of her campaign events. Picking Minnesota Governor Tim Walz also served as another way to double down on her support for strict gun control measures, given his turn from an NRA “A” rating to a supporter of the policies Harris is pushing after 2018.
So, there’s plenty of room for Trump and his pro-gun running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, to contrast themselves with Harris and Walz.
But it remains unclear if they’re going to do that. Up until his Thursday press conference, Trump’s most recent comments on gun owners were that he doesn’t think they actually vote. He’s repeatedly emphasized that line, even at the NRA’s Annual Meeting.
“The gun owners don’t vote,” Trump said while announcing an initiative that appears to amount to little more than lawn signs and t-shirts. “It’s so crazy. I would think that they would vote more than any other group of people and it’s just the opposite. They don’t vote.”
Perhaps he’s decided to try and give gun owners a reason to turn out to vote. Or maybe Thursday’s comments were just a few fleeting thoughts in another stream-of-consciousness performance. The main way to tell the difference will be whether Trump starts to highlight his gun policy promises as consistently as Harris has been doing.
That’s it for now.
I’ll talk to you all again soon.
Thanks,
Stephen Gutowski
Founder
The Reload
