Civilization
First, Second, Fourth Amendments Endangered by Kamala Harris
Kamala Harris, not Donald Trump, actually endangers the First, Second, and Fourth Amendments, as her record in office shows.
Vice President Kamala Harris and Democrats claim they are the party of freedom. In Harris’ interview on Club Shay Shay on Monday, she argued that people need to vote for her to preserve the First, Second, and Fourth Amendments, that Trump “wants to terminate the Constitution.”
Harris, not Trump, endangers people’s rights
Yet, on the First Amendment, Harris previously called for government “oversight or regulation” of social media to stop what she calls misinformation. In 2022, her vice-presidential nominee, Gov. Tim Walz, claimed: “There’s no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech.”
On gun ownership, Harris went so far as claiming: “I am in favor of the Second Amendment, I don’t believe that we should be taking anyone’s guns away.”
Reassuring, but Harris’ emphatic past support for gun control is consistent and legion. Let’s look at her record. She claimed during her 2020 presidential campaign, “I support a mandatory buyback program.” When pressed about Joe Biden’s claim at the time that she couldn’t ban assault weapons with an executive order, Harris enthusiastically responded, “Hey, Joe, rather than saying ‘No, we can’t,’ let’s say ‘Yes, we can.’”
But this is nothing new. Harris has strongly advocated for gun control for years. As San Francisco’s District Attorney, she declared, “Just because you legally possess a gun in the sanctity of your locked home doesn’t mean that we’re not going to walk into that home and check to see if you’re being responsible.” She even supports warrantless searches, raising concerns she also doesn’t want to be bothered by the Fourth Amendment.
Directly opposed to the right of self-defense
In a 2008 amicus brief, Harris argued that a complete ban on all handguns is constitutional. She even said there is no individual right to self-defense.
The Biden-Harris administration has been the most anti-self defense administration to date, shutting down thousands of gun dealers by mid-2022 due to minor paperwork errors. They renewed Obama’s Operation Choke Point to cut off financial resources for gun manufacturers and dealers; the companies that remained had to grapple with increased costs. The Biden-Harris administration has also established a national gun registry.
If Kamala Harris becomes president, she will push for even more restrictions. The new Office of Gun Violence Prevention is “overseen” by Harris, which coordinates the administration’s gun control initiatives. The office oversaw a recently released U.S. Surgeon General report that fails to mention a single benefit of gun ownership.
The OGVP was instrumental in implementing the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, introducing complex rules that classify many gun owners as firearms dealers. If you sell a gun to a friend once and discuss selling a second one to anyone, you must first become a licensed dealer. If you sell one gun and keep a record of the transaction, you are also required to first become licensed.
Many BCSA rules are vague, giving the government discretion to arbitrarily label individuals as dealers.
The tool to confiscate guns
Under Harris’ leadership, the OGVP pushed for lawsuits against gun makers and sellers whenever criminals use their guns. She also pushed to ban semi-automatic “assault” weapons, and require background checks on all private gun transfers.
By early 2022, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives had developed a digital database containing nearly a billion firearms transactions.
U.S. Reps. Jim Jordan and Thomas Massie found that Bank of America provided the FBI with credit card data for firearms purchases without even requiring a warrant or probable cause.
With a national gun registry in place, officials can now easily identify legal gun owners. Harris’ past threats to confiscate guns become much more likely to succeed.
Gun control has already taken center stage in Harris’ campaign. Harris made gun control a key topic in her first event in Wisconsin and again at a gathering of the American Federation of Teachers.
It isn’t just that Democrats want to regulate every part of our lives, but the real threat to the First, Second, and Fourth Amendments to the Bill of Rights are at risk from Harris. Those freedoms are endangered if she wins.
This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.
Dr. John R. Lott, Jr. is an economist and a world-recognized expert on guns and crime. During the Trump administration, he served as the Senior Advisor for Research and Statistics in the Office of Justice Programs and then the Office of Legal Policy in the U.S. Department of Justice. Lott has held research or teaching positions at various academic institutions including the University of Chicago, Yale University, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, UCLA, and Rice University, and was the chief economist at the United States Sentencing Commission during 1988-1989. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from UCLA.
Nobel laureate Milton Friedman noted: “John Lott has few equals as a perceptive analyst of controversial public policy issues.”
Lott is a prolific author for both academic and popular publications. He has published over 100 articles in peer-reviewed academic journals and written ten books, including “More Guns, Less Crime,” “The Bias Against Guns,” and “Freedomnomics.” His most recent books are “Dumbing Down the Courts: How politics keeps the smartest judges off the bench” and “Gun Control Myths.”
He has been one of the most productive and cited economists in the world (from 1969 to 2000 he ranked 26th worldwide in terms of quality-adjusted total academic journal output, 4th in terms of total research output, and 86th in terms of citations). Among economics, business, and law professors his research is currently the 15th most downloaded in the world. He is also a frequent writer of op-eds.
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