Until recently, Democratic candidates fled from the topic of guns. Onetime campaign consultant Matt McTighe told NPR last month that in the early 2000s, his clients would shut down the conversation. “We just can’t talk about it,” he said, mimicking a client. “It’s not a winning issue. There’s no constituency for it. Just don’t make me say anything about it.”
Not anymore, apparently. In this election cycle, the Democratic nominees are not shy to talk about guns—their own guns, that is.
“I’m a gun owner; Tim Walz is a gun owner,” Vice President Kamala Harris said in a recent interview with Oprah. Then she shocked her interviewer by adding, “If someone breaks into my house, they’re getting shot.” She laughed, the audience laughed, and she seemed immediately contrite. “I probably should not have said that. My staff will deal with that later.”
But what’s there to fix or spin? Harris was being crystal clear, deadly serious, and, I believe, perfectly intentional. This is how she hopes to lure independents and erstwhile conservatives, especially in Midwestern swing states: by confidently and fluently speaking the language of gun owners. As an electoral strategy, there may be some logic to it. In all other respects, it is dumb and dangerous, pandering to fatal illusions and temptations about owning a gun.
Harris never considers, for example, if her intruder is a criminal—that is presumed. What if he (or she) were mentally ill, or disoriented by drugs? What if he made a mistake, like a deliveryman who knocked on the wrong door? What if he had just been in a bad car accident and needed urgent medical assistance for his passenger? That is, what if this person were unarmed and actually posed no physical threat? Would Harris shoot him down all the same? And what if he were armed: with an AR-15. Would pulling a gun save her anyway?
These are all crucial considerations Harris glides over. They are crucial considerations too often cast aside in the national frenzy to arm up, and with fatal, tragic consequences.
We are in the midst of a frightening arms race in America—as if our absurd civilian arsenal were not already massive enough. Once dominated by conservative white men, researchers note, the ranks of gun owners continues to swell and grow more diverse. There are 400 million guns and 20 million assault rifles in America. Seemingly everyone now, on all sides of the political and cultural spectrum, is arming up.
As The Wall Street Journal noted in a recent piece titled, “The Most Surprising New Gun Owners Are U.S. Liberals,” as of 2022 nearly 30 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning Americans now own a gun, up from 22 percent only a decade ago. During the pandemic, nearly 70 percent of new gun buyers were people of color, and Black gun ownership has spiked 17 points since 2019. Half of new gun buyers in 2020 were women, Vox reported last month, whereas only 9 to 14 percent of women owned guns between 1980 and 2014. No wonder we’re fast approaching the day when half of all American households have at least one gun.
Why are they rushing to be armed? There is a familiar driver: fear. Researchers and gun owners cite various factors, including worries about the breakdown of civil society sparked by the isolation and lockdowns of Covid—and amplified by the tumult that gripped cities after the police killing of George Floyd. Throughout, we have been terrorized by Donald Trump, who incited a deadly insurrection and has threatened violence against his supposed enemies so many times we’ve lost count. The Trump era has also encouraged a resurgence of (often armed) neo-Nazi and otherwise extremist right-wing groups, making minorities understandably fearful of rising hate crimes. Meanwhile, mass shootings remain a persistent scourge, making news on a near-daily basis. And on an hourly basis, you can find media stories and politicians telling you that violent crime is everywhere, inescapable.
In the face of these manifold perceived threats, people feel they have no choice but to get a gun. But there’s another reason many people feel this way: Seemingly everyone has a gun already. People feel the need to have a gun, in other words, because society is so deadly—from all the guns. It’s a self-reinforcing doom loop that ends with the entire nation armed.
I’ve always felt this was by design. The NRA successfully lobbied its elected allies to pass permissive laws across America, recklessly emboldening gun owners and degrading the security of society. So-called Stand Your Ground laws, enacted by 28 states since only 2004, protect gun owners who shoot someone they believe threatens them with bodily harm. In 26 states, people are allowed to carry a concealed gun in public without a permit and without safety training. In half of America, therefore, you have to worry about gun owners who might see you as a threat, are empowered by the law to draw their weapon, and have no training in how to use it. No wonder people feel terrorized.
The problem is, more guns will not solve the problem; they will not make us safer. And now, chief among those spreading this lie is the vice president herself. Harris wants you to know she protects herself and home with a gun; she is her own “first line of defense,” as the NRA would have it. But, as public health researchers note, residents of gun-owning households are more likely to be harmed or killed by a gun—not less. Guns at home are used in escalating incidents of domestic violence; they’re accidentally discharged by children; they’re intentionally fired in suicides. They also get stolen, and end up in the hands of criminals.
Lost in all the hyperbole over crime, and presidential candidates’ rush to prove themselves tough on crime, is a crucial fact: This country is growing safer, with a notable decline in gun violence. Here in Baltimore, where there were more than 300 murders per year between 2015 and 2022, the city is on pace to fall below 200 this year for the first time in over a decade. Boston, recently celebrated by The Economist as “America’s Safest City,” has had just 14 murders in 2024.
Most remarkably, this has happened without measurable changes in gun regulations, which our Supreme Court has effectively blocked. Baltimore and many other cities have invested in violence intervention programs, where mediators negotiate brewing conflicts and persuade belligerents that it’s not worth it to draw a gun. That message evidently works. Kamala Harris should try it.