The Presidential Debate Missed A Key Issue

As Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump took the debate stage Tuesday night, Kentucky law enforcement officers swept the woods for a former Army reservist. They suspected Joseph Couch, 32, of opening fire this week on highway traffic with an AR-15 outside the town of London.

The week before, a 14-year-old student opened fire with a similar weapon at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, killing two students and two teachers and injuring nine others. It was the 45th school shooting this year, and the deadliest, according to CNN .

The twin mass shootings easily could have prompted the ABC News debate moderators to question how the candidates would stem gun violence.

Instead, neither the candidates nor the moderators discussed gun violence at all — a glaring omission at a time when the Supreme Court’s increasingly robust interpretation of the Second Amendment promises to hamstring any reformist agenda.

Forgoing debate on gun violence meant losing an opportunity to get the candidates on the record on one of the most contentious and intractable problems facing Americans today.

Harris had perhaps the most to gain on the issue.

The Harris campaign’s official gun position calls for universal background checks, a federal “red flag” law to temporarily block people from obtaining guns if they present a threat to themselves or others, and the reinstatement of a federal assault weapons ban.

But back when she was running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2019, Harris also said she supported a mandatory buyback for semiautomatic rifles .

That position likely reflected liberal politics of the time. A mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, had just thrust guns into the center of