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Kamala Harris for the castle doctrine, and the Second Amendment [1]

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Date: 2024-09-22  

In a campaign year crowded with surprising moments, this was another one, and a big one. In a freewheeling interview with Oprah Winfrey before a live audience on Thursday, Vice President Kamala Harris made it clear where she stands on being a gun owner, and what she’d do if push ever came to shove. Harris offered a warning, seemingly offhand and streetwise, but dead serious under the surface: "If somebody breaks in my house, they're getting shot."

When she said it at the "Unite for America" livestream in Farmington Hills, Mich., the comment was met in the hall with recognition, and not a little smiling acceptance. Harris realized right away she may have crossed some line of polite discourse — "I probably should not have said that, but my staff will deal with that later," she said, with mischief — but she needn’t have apologized: That seemingly intemperate statement on the campaign trail could work to Harris’ advantage in Michigan (a state with a 40 percent gun ownership rate) and some of the swing states that many political observers believe will determine the outcome of the election.

Elsewhere in the interview, the vice president expressed her support for the Second Amendment, which in itself isn’t exactly new; she has spoken of her own gun ownership more than once over the last five years, most recently in the Sept. 10 debate with former president Donald Trump.

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Her statement on Thursday was its own line in the sand, a boundary between supporting firearms for one’s personal protection and her known opposition to combat-ready assault weapons — the focus of the country’s more agonizing gun-control debate. She said something similar in her lopsided exhibition with former president Donald Trump, but a lot got lost in the fog of Trump’s shambolic performance that night in Philadelphia.

Winfrey’s interview on Thursday gave the issue new energy. Oprah set the table with the issue … and the vice president delivered. Her rhetorical frankness about a willingness to bust a cap to defend her life and property is bound to resonate with defenders of the Second Amendment — and, by definition, many of the more moderate, less ideologically driven Republican moderates the Harris campaign has found common ground with in recent weeks. And more: When the vice president addresses the issue so frankly, as a dimension of her personal safety, at a level everyday people can understand, it gives a kind of permission for other Democrats down-ticket to do the same thing with their constituents, in their districts, in the swing states and beyond.

Harris’ posture dovetails with the castle doctrine, the legal principle that states (in a jurisprudential nutshell) that one’s home is their castle and entitled to be defended as such. It’s a cornerstone of the rationale at the passionate heart of gun ownership in the United States … and the basis for Harris’ frank comment on Thursday. We can’t know now if her stance will have any substantive traction with voters. As it is, it’s a possibly meaningful, more than cosmetic attempt to bridge one of the oldest third-rail issues dividing Democrats and Republicans. The vice president appears to realize that, with 42 percent of American households having at least one handgun for personal protection, this facet of the gun-ownership debate is one that Democrats can own without flinching, embracing it in a way that makes practical everyday sense.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/9/22/2272067/-Kamala-Harris-for-the-castle-doctrine-and-the-Second-Amendment?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web

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