Kamala Harris calls for Congress to act on gun control: 'Slaughter have to stop'

Tom McCarthy
The Guardian
Wed, 24 Mar 2021 09:51 UTC

© Reuters/Eduardo Munoz/Carlos Barria

US VP Kamala Harris and guns

Decrying two mass shootings in the United States in less than a week, Kamala Harris said on Wednesday that "these slaughters have to stop" but deflected a question about whether Joe Biden was prepared to take executive action to restrict access to guns, calling instead for action by Congress.

The US vice-president said on the CBS This Morning program.

"We should first expect the US Congress to act. I'm not willing to give up on what we must do to appeal to the hearts and minds and the reason of the members of the US Senate."

Two gun safety bills have been passed by the Democratic-controlled House, but under current rules unless Republicans in the Senate budge from their opposition to any such legislation - which they have shown no sign of doing - the bills cannot advance.

In a wide-ranging interview on CBS, Harris lamented a shooting on Monday evening in a Colorado grocery store in which 10 were killed, and a series of shootings at three massage parlors in the Atlanta area a week earlier that left eight dead including six women of Asian descent.

"We are seeing tragedy after tragedy after tragedy," Harris said.

But challenged on what action the Biden administration would take to confront the mass shooting epidemic, Harris indicated that no unilateral executive action was immediately on the table. "I don't think the president is excluding that," Harris said, "but I want to be clear that if we really want something that is lasting, we need to pass legislation."

She called on voters and activists to keep the pressure up on Congress to impose universal background checks for gun purchases, a broadly popular proposal.

"Let's say that we're going to hold our elected people accountable if they're not gonna be with us on what we need in terms of reasonable gun safety laws," Harris said.

Comment: Apples and oranges - Harris conflates concepts as a means to strip Second Amendment rights. She can't prosecute for alternative opinions. This is a form of blackmail.

As the first female vice-president and the first vice-president of Asian descent, Harris said the Atlanta-area shootings underscored "the seriousness of AAPI hate crime, especially over the course of the last year", using an acronym for Asian American and Pacific Islanders.

Comment: A public relations ploy, Harris' lineage should have no influence on this question.

But Harris stopped short of saying that shootings should be prosecuted as a hate crime, which activists have called for but which local prosecutors so far have resisted.

"I'm not prosecuting that case, so I'm not gonna tell" prosecutors how to do so, Harris said.

After two months in office, Harris has a robust profile in the Biden administration, traveling with the president to Atlanta last week to meet with officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and to meet with leaders of the local AAPI community.

Harris told CBS that she and Biden would "absolutely" visit the US-Mexico border in person to survey overcrowding in detention centers for minors and others seeking asylum.

The Clinton Foundation also announced this week that Harris was to appear with former president Bill Clinton on Friday at a Clinton Global Initiative event to discuss the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on women.

Comment: A great choice of an expert on women.

Clinton and Harris would discuss "empowering women and girls in the US and around the world", a press release said. Clinton was also to appear in conversation with the voting rights champion Stacey Abrams to discuss expanding participation in democracy.

Comment: Lining up the horse with the cart? Shooting sprees always seem to predate the push for gun control:

As the Biden administration launches a new push for gun control, Vice President Kamala Harris insists that nobody's "coming after your guns." With Harris on record saying the exact opposite, will anyone believe her?

Speaking to CBS News on Wednesday, Harris urged Congress to pass a pair of bills that would strengthen background checks for weapon purchases. The bills were recently passed by the Democrat-controlled House, but need a 60-vote majority in the Senate. With control of the Senate split 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans, they are unlikely to pass, even after two high-profile mass shootings in the past two weeks.

Harris scolded Republicans who equate gun control with "getting rid of the Second Amendment," telling them to "stop pushing the false choice that this means everybody's trying to come after your guns, that is not what we're talking about."

Harris' appeal echoes President Biden's call for "common sense" gun laws, a call he made on Tuesday, one day after alleged gunman Ahmad Al Aliwi Al-Issa murdered 10 people in a grocery store in Boulder, Colorado.

However, gun owners and Second Amendment advocates are unlikely to be moved by her promise not to "come after" their guns. For one thing, Joe Biden explicitly vowed on the campaign trail to rid America of "assault weapons," a term ascribed by Democrats to hundreds of weapons, from certain shotguns to pistols to the ubiquitous AR-15 rifle. Asked in 2019 by CNN's Anderson Cooper if "a Biden administration... will come for my guns?" Biden answered: "Bingo, you're right if you have an assault weapon... they should be illegal, period."

His plan to "end our gun violence epidemic" includes promises to ban the sale of these weapons by reinstituting a Clinton-era law, to register all existing weapons on a federal database, to implement a mandatory buyback scheme, and to ban all online firearms sales. However, these actions are the purview of Congress, and Biden can push for them as much as he wants, but they ultimately won't pass without Republican votes in the Senate.

Both Biden and Harris are aware of this, hence their pleas to lawmakers. Biden can take executive action, and Press Secretary Jen Psaki said on Tuesday that he is "considering a range" of executive orders, but their scope is far more limited and temporary than any laws passed by Congress.

Yet before she was vice president, Harris announced during her own presidential campaign that she wouldn't wait for Congress to act. She asserted in 2019 that she would ban the importation of AR-15 style rifles, mandate "near universal background checks," implement mandatory buybacks, and make gun manufacturers criminally liable for mass shootings, all by executive order if necessary and within her first 100 days in office. When Biden stressed during a debate that she had "no constitutional authority" to do this, Harris responded: "Hey Joe, instead of saying 'No, we can't,' let's say 'Yes, we can.'"

Let's just take law into our own hands and the country will just have to deal with it - seems to be a Democratic thing:

Harris was gung-ho about depriving Americans of their beloved AR-15s, as was fellow candidate Beto O'Rourke, who said taking Americans' rifles is "exactly what we're going to do... Americans who own AR-15s, AK-47s, will have to sell them to the government."

Harris told reporters that compulsory buybacks were "a great idea," and promised to do the same if elected. However, campaign trail rhetoric is just that. Barack Obama tried and failed to reintroduce the Clinton-era assault weapons ban in 2013, but fell foul of Congress [...] and short of curbing the number of so-called 'assault weapons' sold in the US.

As such, Biden and Harris may have every intention of getting these weapons off the streets, but barring a shakeup of Congress in next year's midterm elections, gun owners and enthusiasts are safe, for now.