Yes, Kamala Harris Owns a Handgun

Late during the presidential debate on Tuesday, Vice President Kamala Harris asserted something that might have surprised some viewers: She owns a gun.

Ms. Harris’s statement came in response to an accusation from former President Donald J. Trump that “she has a plan to confiscate everybody’s gun.”

Ms. Harris pointed to her record of gun ownership, as well as that of her vice-presidential nominee, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota.

“This business about taking everyone’s guns away — Tim Walz and I are both gun owners,” she said. “We’re not taking anybody’s guns away, so stop with the continuous lying about this stuff.”

This is not the first time that Ms. Harris has spoken of owning a gun, a cultural signifier that over the years has more often been associated with Republicans than Democrats. When she was running for president in the 2020 Democratic primary, Ms. Harris, a former prosecutor, said that she kept a gun for safety.

“I am a gun owner, and I own a gun for probably the reason a lot of people do — for personal safety,” she told reporters in Iowa in 2019. “I was a career prosecutor.”

By invoking their gun ownership, Ms. Harris and Mr. Walz have tried to refute the contention that one either supports an interpretation of the Second Amendment that does not restrict guns in the United States or advocates the wholesale confiscation of them. Both Democrats have called for some restrictions on who can own a gun and how they can be purchased, often re-upping those pleas after mass shootings.

Mr. Trump also owns guns, though the New York Police Department sought to revoke his concealed carry permit after he was convicted of 34 felonies in May.