X Close

Why Kamala’s gun is a powerful weapon She has embraced the American normal

Kamala's gun is an olive branch. Jim Watson/POOL/AFP/Getty Images

Kamala's gun is an olive branch. Jim Watson/POOL/AFP/Getty Images


October 11, 2024   6 mins

In America, the gun is freedom’s prosthetic (followed by cars and credit cards). Yet Kamala Harris’s admission, first during an interview with Oprah Winfrey, then in one with 60 Minutes, that she owns a gun sent liberal heads spinning. Went one amazed headline on Vox, a leading liberal news site: “Wait, Kamala Harris Owns a Gun?” The astonished response to the news that a Democratic leader owns a handgun shows how far the country’s liberals have moved from what once passed for American reality.

Democratic presidents Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were all hunters who were open about owning a gun. Before he was elected president, Harry Truman proudly posed for a photograph holding two pistols he had bought that once belonged to Jesse James. And though FDR was the first president to try to pass national legislation restricting the ownership of weapons, Eleanor Roosevelt was said to often be packing a pistol in her purse.

Still, just as few people are as opposed to war as soldiers who have fought in them, owning and using a gun hasn’t stood in the way of a Democratic politician passionately opposing the wanton possession of firearms. No one hated what he referred to as the “extreme” policies of the NRA more than Carter, who at one time claimed to own “a handgun, four shotguns, and two rifles”. And it’s not as if the other side corresponded to the caricatures of political positions that abound today. Nixon was caught on tape saying, “I don’t know why any individual should have a right to have a revolver in his house.” Reagan, a firm defender of the NRA, alleged to sometimes carry a handgun in his briefcase, was a powerful advocate for the Brady Bill, which requires extensive background checks for prospective gun purchasers. He also supported a ban on owning assault weapons, a policy proposal which is anathema to just about every Republican now.

It’s a platitude to say that guns occupy a prominent place in the American psyche. But they are the most explicit dysfunction of American life. As our freedoms expand, so do our fears and insecurities; as freedom gets big in one dimension, people tend to feel small in another. As anyone knows who has sat basking in the sun on an American beach, only to have someone else plant themselves down a few feet away with a large incursive dog and a speaker blaring loud music, one person’s freedom is often another person’s misery. I have a suspicion that as the American sense of entitlement has trampled the sense of American responsibility, and as larger freedoms have resulted in feelings of vulnerability and inadequacy, sedans have been overtaken by SUVs, fast food portions have grown freakishly large, empty displays of personal virtue have grown bigger and bigger — and handguns have come to be seen as hopelessly inferior to semiautomatic rifles.

Harris’s openness about owning a handgun — it’s a Glock, she told 60 Minutes — is probably the most dramatically symbolic step she is taking towards the way people live rather than how they ought to live. If I had my druthers, the next president would pass a national law requiring every gun owner to keep their guns locked up at gun clubs, as they do in Norway, Anders Breivik’s slaughter being a monstrous anomaly in that country. But that is no more likely to happen than Utopia itself. What is within legislative reach is the shaming and ostracising of Republican lawmakers who oppose a ban on killing machines such as semiautomatic rifles. The country needs to return to the days of gun-loving liberal politicians leading the charge against the insanity of private citizens owning weapons of war. To the days when a liberal president could lay claim to common values, thus making it possible for a sense of shared community to push back the boundaries of radical individualism, inch by inch. Walz, a proud gun-owner and hunter, is squarely in this tradition. But he’s not running for president, and his presence on the ticket is too transparently expedient and ornamental for it to represent a positive step forward in this respect. Plus, marksman that he claims to be, he spends much of his time shooting himself in the foot.

It was, most likely, Obama, for all his political shrewdness often too comfortable lolling in rarefied liberal sentiments, who made the Democrats the party of anti-gun fantasy. That created an opportunity for Republicans to turn the Second Amendment into a matter of constitutional Armageddon. Obama’s remark, uttered in 2008, that people in red states “get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them…” hangs over the Democratic party to this day. Hillary Clinton, his political rival at the time, pounced on that as an instance of unforgivable “elitism”, only to exhibit an identical elitism when she referred to the same segment of Americans as a “basket of deplorables” four years later. By 2016, when Obama blithely declared on CNN that he had never owned a gun, thus strikingly distancing himself from liberal gun-owning presidents who fought for gun control laws, a new generation of young liberal voters had complacently, and childishly, assimilated the idea that gun ownership tout court was a moral anathema.

In this sense, Harris owning up to possessing a gun bodes well for a Democratic party that has become more and more cut off from the way most Americans — decent, commonsensical Americans, not the small contingent of hard-Right fanatics — live their lives. Horrified by police murders of innocent blacks, they want the police to protect them from violence; whether it’s committed by blacks or whites, they don’t care. They are confused by the initiative to introduce young children to the option to radically alter their genders. And even though alarmed by the effects of climate change, they cannot understand why they have been hectored and shamed into buying electric cars they cannot afford.

The acknowledgment, by Harris, that you can own a handgun and, by extension, a hunting rifle, and at the same time want to make semiautomatic rifles illegal, should be about as controversial as someone claiming to be an atheist and suddenly praying to God in a time of trouble. That’s not to say that Harris’s avowal doesn’t also serve several other purposes.

The conventional interpretation of Harris’s “politics of joy” is that she and her handlers mean to contrast that with Trump’s vindictive dark vision of America. But the slogan also tries, on a subtler level, to appeal to people who might be drawn to Trump as the alternative to a repressive liberalism. The woke political revolution of the past eight or so years, now sinking in as an everyday social and cultural style is hardly less dark, in its comparatively understated way, than Trump’s American carnage. In Trump’s vision, ordinary Americans are being chased in the streets by immigrants and criminals. In the woke vision, ordinary Americans are chasing down non-ordinary Americans, group by group. The politics of joy is meant to cry Halt! to both destructive cartoons of American life. (Having invented “woke”, liberals have now made the term embarrassingly unfashionable to use; I demur. You’re stuck with it.)

“In the woke vision, ordinary Americans are chasing down non-ordinary Americans, group by group.”

And what better way to enforce an injunction against the two competing darknesses than the good, old-fashioned American figure of the new sheriff in town, this time sporting, not the six-shooters of Jesse James, but a Glock, the preferred weapon of regular and elite military organisations throughout the world? You’re a criminal or the wrong sort of undocumented immigrant? Hands up. You want to indoctrinate children to feel like racists? Say hello to my little friend. Language in America has become, on the one hand, so extreme, and on the other, thanks to the internet, so much like grunts or graffiti, that words have started to lose their function as vessels of meaning. A gun, on the other hand, has a clear, irreducible meaning.

Finally, and maybe most important of all, the person bearing arms, in this case Kamala Harris, is a short female, part black and part of South Asian descent. In the kingdom of Ends, in the kingdom of God, in the classless society, in the well-ordered society, in Shangri-La, none of that would matter. In America, in 2024, it matters. She also comes across as shallow, thin-skinned, super-entitled, phony and mediocre. That matters. None of this is nice or decent or easy to say. But it is the truth. A torrent of coercive pieties made the impuissant Biden choose Harris as his vice president; Biden’s hubris and lack of character made her their party’s presidential hope. If you had to choose the person least appropriate as Democratic nominee, when the deranged Trump, and the corrupt, craven enablers in his party, simply have to be expunged from the American scene, it would be Kamala Harris.

And so. Here is Harris and her Glock and her embrace of the American normal and the gun as olive branch. It is the gun of the maverick sheriff, of the lone cop inventing their own conformity, of the private eye fighting their way through an existential fog. In American culture, the terrible reality of a gun gets transfigured into the means to a happy ending. As such it might well allow the breathtakingly improbable figure of Kamala Harris to attempt two national salvations: to clean up the insular, self-serving infantilism of woke politics, and to present concrete proof of affinity and respect to alienated people — and who can blame them for their alienation, to a degree? — excited by Trump into a condition tilting on the brink of national suicide.


Lee Siegel is an American writer and cultural critic. In 2002, he received a National Magazine Award. His selected essays will be published next spring.


Subscribe
Notify of
guest

76 Comments
Most Voted
Newest Oldest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Matt Hindman
Matt Hindman
2 months ago

Lee, do us a favor and shut up. Kamala Harris was a major backer of Proposition H (handgun ban including confiscation) back when she was San Francisco’s District Attorney. Yes, you read that right. This would have banned the very same firearm she claims she owns now. Harris has supported every single bit of gun control no matter how extreme in her political career almost to Diane Feinstein levels. She was part of an amicus brief in D.C. vs Heller which is a matter of public record. That tiger is not changing its stripes anytime soon. What Harris is doing is speaking out of both sides of her mouth to different parts of the country and relying on people like you to uncritically push what she says.
https://cdn.thereload.com/app/uploads/2024/09/Document-_-The-Mercury-News-Archives.pdf

Buena Vista
Buena Vista
2 months ago
Reply to  Matt Hindman

Very well said, Matt.

Eric Mader
Eric Mader
1 month ago
Reply to  Matt Hindman

Yes. She is word-salading out both sides of her mouth, and this insufferable Siegel is typing salad dressing.

Last article of his referenced “toxic” in relation to the male VP debate, this article is on about Kamala’s “powerful” Glock. Typing typing typing.

Milton Gibbon
Milton Gibbon
1 month ago
Reply to  Matt Hindman

Like locking people up for possession of marijuana and then laughing about taking it yourself.

Michael Cavanaugh
Michael Cavanaugh
23 days ago
Reply to  Matt Hindman

Hear, hear.

Nell Clover
Nell Clover
2 months ago

Fanboi stuff. Do we think the author believes what he writes? Is anyone ever that deluded? Is anyone ever that unaware of the facts?

She admits to owning a Glock. A handgun she’s promoted the banning of in two states, with a magazine capacity she’s promoted banning at a Federal level. Except in the detail of those proposed bans, she would have been exempt thanks to her weird self-classification as “law enforcement”. One rule for me, another for thee.

She isn’t embracing the American normal and the gun as olive branch, she’s desperately angling for votes. At this juncture she’ll quite literally say anything to be elected.

Terry M
Terry M
1 month ago
Reply to  Nell Clover

I’m not gun-savvy, but I understand that a real owner of a Glock would almost certainly mention what model. And she said she fired it … at a range. The idiot reporter failed to ask “When was the last time?”
Harris is an airhead.

Michael Cavanaugh
Michael Cavanaugh
1 month ago
Reply to  Terry M

As the owner of a Glock I wish people would not mention the model (at least, not first off). Why? It always calls attention to the slander that this manufacturer makes especially harmful guns. (It does not ). Who shrieks, “OMG he has a Smith & Wesson!!!”? (No one. Just one more manufacturer )

Martin M
Martin M
1 month ago

Yeah, but they are black, and so are owned by “bad people”. Also, they are “made of plastic”, and so “don’t set off metal detectors” (remember that when they first came out?)

Martin M
Martin M
1 month ago
Reply to  Terry M

Speaking as a former Glock owner, I can definitely say they wouldn’t. Everyone knows what a Glock is. Even “gun people” (and I count myself as one) have to look up what the model numbers are (unless they have owned that specific model, as I have with Models 19 and 34).

Brett H
Brett H
2 months ago

I really don’t think Harris owning a Glock is top of mind with people. The writer tries to makes some interesting but obvious points out of the news but ultimately it’s nothing.

Samuel Ross
Samuel Ross
1 month ago

This author is using language too big for his subject.

Martin M
Martin M
1 month ago
Reply to  Samuel Ross

He might want to do some research on what an “assault weapon” actually is, and what makes it “bad” (nothing really, apart from looking like a “baddies’ gun”).

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
1 month ago

You know who doesn’t care if Harris owns a gun? 99.9% of gun owners. They care about the second amendment. Harris comes across as a phoney yet again, because no one believes she actually owns a gun. She stinks of inauthenticity.

Chauncey Gardiner
Chauncey Gardiner
1 month ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

Yup…
Perhaps “Smith & Wesson” would have been more authentistic-ish?

Rob N
Rob N
1 month ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

She may own one but bet it is recent and that she has barely used it and would be the wrong sort of lethal with it.

Sisyphus Jones
Sisyphus Jones
1 month ago

What a candy-a**. Raise your hand if you’re tired of effete British Leftists sermonizing about things they don’t understand. Guns in America is a difficult topic. The deeper you get into the data related to guns and gun violence in America, the more you’ll realize that guns are only a small part of the problem. But Lee isn’t interested in data. He’s certainly not interested in learning anything that doesn’t stroke his biases. And you can bet your a** that he has nothing to teach you.

Samuel Ross
Samuel Ross
1 month ago
Reply to  Sisyphus Jones

Nicely put, pal.

Martin M
Martin M
1 month ago
Reply to  Sisyphus Jones

Apparently the writer is American (although for an American, he doesn’t know much about guns).

Sisyphus Jones
Sisyphus Jones
1 month ago
Reply to  Martin M

He sure sounds like someone who has an ocean between him and what he’s talking about.

Martin M
Martin M
1 month ago
Reply to  Sisyphus Jones

Yes, he does, but I was thinking “San Francisco Leftie” rather than “European”.

Lancashire Lad
Lancashire Lad
1 month ago
Reply to  Martin M

Born in The Bronx, according to Wiki.

Martin M
Martin M
1 month ago
Reply to  Lancashire Lad

You’d think he’d know the odd thing about guns then.

Katharine Eyre
Katharine Eyre
1 month ago
Reply to  Sisyphus Jones

The author’s recent contributions have had the feel of an experiment, like sticks used to prod us with the aim of finding out whether the Brits (who I guess still make up the majority of Unherd’s BTL) are buying the nonsense being fed to us by the Democrat/Harris campaign.
And I think the answer to that line of enquiry is a resounding NO.
God knows I’m no Trump fan but the thought of Chucklehead and Knucklehead running the world’s most powerful country is terrifying.

Martin M
Martin M
1 month ago
Reply to  Katharine Eyre

Yeah. Far better to have a senile convicted felon who hates democracy in charge.

Peter Lee
Peter Lee
1 month ago
Reply to  Martin M

How did he do in 2016?
So you can be factually correct – One is not a convicted Felon until after sentencing. This has yet to occur.

Martin M
Martin M
1 month ago
Reply to  Peter Lee

That is completely wrong. Conviction comes before sentencing (inasmuch as you obviously can’t be sentenced before you are convicted). Trump has been convicted, but not yet sentenced.

General Store
General Store
1 month ago
Reply to  Sisyphus Jones

He’s theworst that Unherd has to offer

Warren Trees
Warren Trees
1 month ago
Reply to  General Store

Amen to that! Hard to believe he has such dim view of reality. Anyone who writes for a living and claims that if he had his druthers, he would mandate guns be kept out of the house is apparently tone deaf on the irony of it all, or has never read George Orwell.The first thing dictators do is ban weapons then free speech.
If he owned a sushi restaurant, he probably would advocate for a ban on fishing.

David Sharples
David Sharples
1 month ago
Reply to  Sisyphus Jones

We can expect the sermonizing to increase, as more and more of British 1st Amendment rights are lost, and the cry of Allahu Akbar is heard in the marketplace.
Oh well.

J Cizek
J Cizek
1 month ago

This guy’s simplistic and yet . . . hundreds of words.
Harris owns a Glock, what kind of a Glock? Does she fire it often? Is she a good shot? What kind of ammunition? What does she think of the proposed high tax and restrictions on ammo purchases?
When did she buy the gun; did she buy it? Was it her husband’s? Is this her first pistol? Did it belong to her husband’s first wife? Was it a gift, from perhaps her old flame? Has she had any formal training? Does she have a concealed carry permit? I could go on; but I would to see her shoot the gun first.
Who cares if she has a gun, except that she dropped the fact like a bomb on must-watch TV.

Martin M
Martin M
1 month ago
Reply to  J Cizek

Glocks come in different calibres, and in (slightly) different sizes, but they all look pretty much the same (basic black), so I’m not sure what benefit you’d get from seeing it (unless you don’t believe she actually has it). Having a gun (even a handgun) in the US is a common enough thing.

Arthur G
Arthur G
1 month ago
Reply to  Martin M

The issue is no one who actually owns and uses a gun just describes it by it’s manufacturer. “I own a Ruger” or “I own a Smith and Wesson” is a meaningless statement. If she were actually familiar with her firearm, she would say “I own a Glock 17”, or at least “I own a 9mm Glock pistol”. Manufacturer is perhaps the least important characteristics of your firearm.

If the interviewer had asked her what calibre her pistol is, she would have talked about growing up middle class.

Martin M
Martin M
1 month ago
Reply to  Arthur G

I don’t think that is right, particularly when it comes to Glocks. I have owned two (Models 19 and 34), and shot many others. They are much of a muchness. Glock only makes semi-auto handguns (with the exception of the curious Model 18 fully auto variant of the Model 17), and they only make them in black (although I believe there are aftermarket coloured slides available for them). They don’t make revolvers, and they don’t make rifles. In short, A Glock is a Glock, and everyone knows what that is..

Steven Carr
Steven Carr
1 month ago

As California Attorney General in 2013, Harris certified “microstamping” technology as viable, which effectively prevented new handgun models, including newer Glock models, from being added to California’s roster of approved handguns for sale. This action restricted access to newer Glock models in California, though it was not a direct ban on all Glocks.
She tried to ban the gun she owns, until gun-owners developed a brand new magic bean technology which meant the guns could be traced if stolen.
As this magic bean technology had never been invented, it was basically a ban on Glock guns.

Matt Hindman
Matt Hindman
1 month ago
Reply to  Steven Carr

I forgot about that one.

T Bone
T Bone
1 month ago

If the goal is to be relatable how about not relying on teleprompters or repeating canned platitudes at scale.

Matt Woodsmith
Matt Woodsmith
1 month ago

I must question the writer’s knowledge of firearms (and therefore competency to wrote that article) at this point. Harris’ Glock IS semi-automatic. I can only assume his constant references to the desire to ban semi-automatic weapons are meant to read ‘fully automatic’, which Reagan and many others were in favour of banning.

Andrew Vanbarner
Andrew Vanbarner
1 month ago
Reply to  Matt Woodsmith

Very few criminal homicides in the US are committed by rifles of any sort, including autoloading rifles like AR or AK style long guns. Nearly all of them are committed by the very sort of handgun that Harris allegedly owns.
Nor do suburban and rural NRA members, in the main, commit those crimes.
Nearly all criminal homicides are committed by a demographic that votes for Democrats, though this is changing, partly because that demographic also makes up the majority of the victims, as well.
Fully automatic rifles have been banned in most states. On a federal level, fully automatic weapons require permits that cost tens of thousands of dollars, and have for all intents and purposes been banned since Prohibition. (America’s attempt to ban alcohol sales, which led to bootleggers slaughtering each other in the 1920s and 30s with the “weapons of war” from WWI.)

J Cizek
J Cizek
1 month ago
Reply to  Matt Woodsmith

Where I come from the Glock is consider an automatic pistol; a pistol that fires multiple rounds after the trigger is pulled just once, is called a machine-pistol. Confusing, I know.

Katharine Eyre
Katharine Eyre
1 month ago

All of this blather about owning a gun just makes Harris seem even more of a fake and a moron without the slightest bit of political sense.
With regard to the latter, watching her try to smear DeSantis about not answering her calls about Hurricane Milton was painful, it backfired on her completely.
A smart candidate would have realised that they are not required right now, are not in the relevant chain of command and said something along the lines of: “Well, I see he’s getting on with the job: I’ve heard from President Biden that they’re working well together – so I wish him all the best”. And then leave the guy in peace to do his job getting millions of people out of harm’s way.
It really says something about how awful this woman is that she can unite Joe Biden and Ron DeSantis in common dislike (whether openly or tacitly expressed).

Bret Larson
Bret Larson
1 month ago
Reply to  Katharine Eyre

I’m sure went right home to complain to Obama.

Marc Epstein
Marc Epstein
1 month ago

Is this a creative writing seminar?

Mark Phillips
Mark Phillips
1 month ago

“Horrified by police murders of innocent blacks”. Tells you all you need to know about this muppet.

Jim C
Jim C
1 month ago
Reply to  Mark Phillips

Biggest threat to innocent Blacks is other Blacks… and using handguns, not “assault weapons”, which are not “weapons of war” because militaries use fully automatic weapons, not semi-autos.

This guy writes fairly well but is wildly ignorant.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 month ago

Lee must be paid by the word.

Nick Wade
Nick Wade
1 month ago

Yet again the obsession with “weapons of war”, “semi-automatic rifles” etc etc. Genuine question. What proportion of gun deaths in America are caused by legally held guns? I only ask because this article suggests that if only people weren’t allowed to buy them gun crime would disappear in America.

There are plenty of other countries with plenty of legal guns around. Canada and Switzerland spring to mind, yet they don’t have America’s problems. This would suggest that the problem of gun deaths in America is a little bit more complex than naive articles like this infer.

Terry M
Terry M
1 month ago
Reply to  Nick Wade

Gun deaths in the US are largely suicides (54%) or gang or drug-related skirmishes. The suicides often use legal guns. The others, not so much. Among people 15-24 the death rate is 2.58 per 100k for whites and 63.78 per 100k for blacks. You figure it out.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
1 month ago
Reply to  Nick Wade

Facts have no place in narratives, including the anti-gun screed. The likes of Seigal do not care that guns pre-date the founding while rampant crime is relatively new. They don’t care that homicides are carried out by predictable groups in predictable places.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 month ago

Lee Siegel is not a serious or sincere writer..so I just glance at his articles

Terry M
Terry M
1 month ago

But they are the most explicit dysfunction of American life. 
Um, have you ever read what passes for ‘rational’ analysis at the NY Times, WaPo, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, etc?
And before you rant about ‘assault weapons’ you need to define them. Generally among the p***y media it means a gun that looks scary. And do you know that semi-automatic means you have to pull the trigger individually for each shot?

Martin M
Martin M
1 month ago
Reply to  Terry M

That is exactly right. An “assault weapon” is black, and looks like it would be owned by a “bad guy”. The fact that the exact same action (the bit that actually makes the gun go “bang”) can be had in something that everyone agrees is a “hunting rifle” never crosses anyone’s mind.

Tom D.
Tom D.
1 month ago

“Killing machines such as semiautomatic rifles”…?
Let’s “follow the science”: In 2023, there were c. 47K gun deaths in the US according to the CDC (up from 39K in 2019, a 20% increase). The US DOT estimates 41K motor vehicle traffic deaths for the same year. There are est. c. 500M guns and 285M motor vehicles in the US, implying that motor vehicles are c. 1.7x more deadly than guns in the US. Of the 47K gun deaths, 27K (58%) were suicides. Excluding gun suicides, motor vehicles are c. 3.7x more deadly than guns.
Zeroing in on “semiautomatic rifles”, in 2020 (last year for which FBI has published the data), 59% of intentional gun killings were perpetrated with pistols, 3% with rifles (incl. semiautomatic so called “assault rifles”), and 1% shotguns, with the remaining 36% unknown. Assuming the 36% unknown follow a similar distribution as the 64% known, pistols account for 94% of killings while rifles (incl. “assault rifles”) only 5% (c. 1K total if applied to 2023), meaning pistols account for 20x more killings than rifles.
Assuming all c. 1K rifle killings were perpetrated with semiautomatic rifles (which is certainly not the case) and assuming there are only 20M semiautomatic rifles in the US (which is almost certainly a massive undercounting), then motor vehicles are c. 310x more deadly than semiautomatic “killing machines”.
In summary, motor vehicles are significantly bigger killers than guns (3.7x), pistols are significantly bigger killers than rifles (20x), and motor vehicles significantly bigger killers than semiautomatic rifles (310x).
You will never shame me into disarming myself against tyranny, including tyranny of factless narratives, nor will you ever convince me that David, armed with a decent sling, cannot defeat Goliath.

Sisyphus Jones
Sisyphus Jones
1 month ago
Reply to  Tom D.

The tyranny of factless narratives. That should be on a T-shirt.

Martin M
Martin M
1 month ago
Reply to  Sisyphus Jones

Have a look on Redbubble – it probably is.

Robert
Robert
1 month ago

And so. Here is Harris and her Glock and her embrace of the American normal and the gun as olive branch. It is the gun of the maverick sheriff, of the lone cop inventing their own conformity, of the private eye fighting their way through an existential fog.
Good grief. Mr. Siegel is representative of many on the Left who fetishize guns and gun ownership more than any gun owner I know.

B. Timothy S.
B. Timothy S.
1 month ago

Although I’m not voting for her, I liked Harris comment about shooting a man who breaks into her house. Most American thing I’ve heard a Democrat say in a while. Perhaps if she hadn’t made political hay out of villainizing our police forces I’d be inclined to think she actually cares about vulnerable people being attacked by criminals.

Also, I feel the need to mention that semiautomatic rifles make up a very, very small amount of homicidal gun deaths in this county. The vast majority come from handguns, and the large majority of those occur in specific communities. These are the exact same communities which have the most run-ins with police, if you could imagine that.

All that said, and the 2nd A supporters will not like me for saying this— In the USA, you have to be 21 years old to buy a handgun just about everywhere. I don’t have any problem with raising the age for semiautomatic rifles above 22lr to the same age. 18 year olds can get a decent bolt or lever action until their brain finishes developing.

Warren Trees
Warren Trees
1 month ago
Reply to  B. Timothy S.

Most of the killing is done by young black men, who are also most of the victims, with illegally-owned guns. What makes anyone think another law is the answer?

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
1 month ago

Kamala claims to have a gun. She is also on record as saying that none of we proles should share that same privilege. Mr. Seigel’s desperate genuflecting is reaching weapons-grade levels of retardation.
How typically totalitarian that his preferred approach is to have “the next president would pass a national law requiring every gun owner to keep their guns locked up at gun clubs.” Like Norway, which has no Second Amendment and whose culture is the polar opposite of ours. But he makes up for this by spelling out how little he knows about guns, or that while guns have been around since the country’s inception, mass shootings are a relatively new thing. Let’s see: when pondering a problem, should there be more attention on variables that have always been present or variables that are more recent?
The rest of this hagiography is reminiscent of how white leftists looked at the candidate who was the second emptiest suit to seek the presidency behind Kamala – Obama. He was such a blank slate with a habit of voting “present” that people could project their wildest fantasies onto him. Kamala was picked as the left-most member of the Senate for a reason. She is the VP of an administration whose policies she pushes.
This woman is not some outsider who no one knows anything about. She is a lifetime insider with a history of quotes, claims, and ideas that one can reference. Whether she believes any of those or not, as has come into question with a series of reversals and non-answers, is another matter except for one key thing – it speaks to the absence of any core beliefs. Harris claims her values have never changed while her stated positions have. Sorry, that’s not how values work.

c hutchinson
c hutchinson
1 month ago

I wonder if Kamela has a permit and if she’s pass a background check.

martin ordody
martin ordody
1 month ago

All the mentioned interviews were a joke. And so is the article.

laurence scaduto
laurence scaduto
1 month ago

Hey! Slagging this guy isn’t cool. We’re supposed to be more open minded than that. And anyway, he writes
“She also comes across as shallow, thin-skinned, super-entitled, phony and mediocre. That matters.”
I myself don’t know much about guns. I never felt the need for one; they seem kinda cowardly to me. Despite living in what many of you would call a dangerously multi-ethnic hell-hole (Bklyn).
Evidently, Siegal isn’t gonna vote for our chosen candidate. Along with close to half of the electorate. But no matter what happens the Second Amendment is safe in the hands of a relatively young, conservative Supreme Court.

Lynette McDougall
Lynette McDougall
1 month ago

As Kamala Harris is currently the Vice President, I doubt that there would be any need for her to shoot a home invader with her own gun. If she had to, it would mean that the Secret Service detail that is supposed to be protecting her had all failed to do its job. More nonsense from someone who wants to be liked by everyone.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 month ago

In the USA, more guns means less crime. Read John Lott’s work and consider the junk science that used by the left.

B Emery
B Emery
1 month ago

In a world where yesterday you read the headline: could extreme weather cripple the us economy, where Israel and Iran are on the brink, where we are one article 5 off ww3, America is running headlines like this:

‘Went one amazed headline on Vox, a leading liberal news site: “Wait, Kamala Harris Owns a Gun?” The astonished response to the news that a Democratic leader owns a handgun shows how far the country’s liberals have moved from what once passed for American reality.’

I’m glad the Americans are talking about all the important issues in the run up to their election.

‘ In this sense, Harris owning up to possessing a gun bodes well for a Democratic party that has become more and more cut off from the way most Americans…’

This is ridiculous.
If you are failing in the polls in America right now, buy a gun. If you are an American citizen, your government thinks you are that stupid that running around wielding a glock will get your vote.

‘ In American culture, the terrible reality of a gun gets transfigured into the means to a happy ending.’

Whether the gun is a terrible reality surely depends on the reality of the situation the gun is used in.

Michael Cavanaugh
Michael Cavanaugh
1 month ago

Siegel is one of those people who thinks that there is a simple, obvious position on gunnery which is both true and good. It is that, well OK hunting is legit, and even some self-defense; but that civilians should not possess military technology, in particular nothing later than double-barrel shotguns, hand-held revolvers, bolt- and lever-action rifles from the late 19th c. Surely civilians should not possess semi-automatic weapons (whether handguns or long guns). This much is common-sense and beyond discussion.
The problem with this view is that it is not (as its proponents seems to assume) consensus. The billionaire boys such as Soros and Bloomberg (girls too, such as Pelosi and Clinton) think that an even wider range should be restricted  Others think that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall nor be infringed by specifying type of weapon, nor by being offered by the right sort of people (the smart and good, rather than the dim and bad).
And why is this consensus not in place? One then falls back on saying that the dim and bad have won out after all.
But is this true? Restrictions to pre-semiauto technology, and a sharp distinction between military and civilian weapons, are not self-explanatory. They need to be argued. Simply asserting moral and intellectual high ground does not do the trick.

Martin M
Martin M
1 month ago

There isn’t really a sharp distinction between civilian and military weapons. A rifle which is good for shooting deer is equally good for shooting people.

Michael Cavanaugh
Michael Cavanaugh
1 month ago
Reply to  Martin M

Ditto to your first sentence. (Why did Custer lose? In part because the Sioux were able to buy repeating rifles on the civilian market, better than then single-shot cavalry carbines.) But as to the second sentence: in fact an AR-15/M-16 may be better for shooting people just because it is less deadly than a .30-06 deer rifle. (It creates more surviving wounded, thus tying up enemy time in first aid measures.)

Martin M
Martin M
1 month ago

I think your last sentence is confusing two concepts. The “more wounded, less dead” is a consideration in military circles, but is more applicable to land mines (a soldier with his leg blown off takes three soldiers off the front line, because two have to carry the stretcher). What you need in a rifle is what is referred to as “stopping power”, which involves somebody immediately being “taken out of action”. There is not much point wounding a guy if he can still get off a shot that kills you afterwards.

nigel roberts
nigel roberts
1 month ago
Reply to  Martin M

Contra the received wisdom, modern infantry doctrine does not view the rifle as the primary means of killing the enemy. (Much has been written about this, starting with US Army studies immediately after the end of WW2.) The best way to kill the enemy is to employ artillery or airstrikes. The role of the rifleman is to keep the enemy pinned down while artillery or airstrikes are called in.
This was the thinking behind NATOs’ move away from 30.caliber (7.62mm) rifles to 5.56mm caliber rifles: with smaller bullets you get to sling twice as much lead down range for every kilo of ammo you carry.

Martin M
Martin M
1 month ago
Reply to  nigel roberts

I get your point, but 5.56 NATO is still a man-stopper at the ranges at which it is expected to be employed. The traditional “military rounds” (.303, .30-06 etc) had the problem of being effective over far greater ranges than they were usually used at. Being effective at 1 km is not really necessary if almost no soldier who isn’t a sniper ever fires at anything over 200 metres or so.

Daniel Lee
Daniel Lee
1 month ago

“If I had my druthers, the next president would pass a national law requiring every gun owner to keep their guns locked up at gun clubs.”
So guns have no role to play in an individual’s right to self-defense and (an even worse supporting premise) individuals have to no right to defend themselves. The State must have a monopoly on force, say our supine friends on the Left, which Stalin deeply believed and our Founders explicitly rejected.

George Venning
George Venning
1 month ago

Does anyone actually believe that Kamala Harris owns a gun for any other reason than so that she can boast about owning one, in an attempt to make a certain group of people who hate her, hate her slightly less?
Are we to believe that a woman who has tried to ban the very type of gun she apparently owns, and who has the benefit of round the clock security from the secret service, really feels the need to keep her own handgun on hand just in case?
Is Siegel celebrating this absurd and hypocritical pandering as a return to some sort of normalcy? Are his spidey senses really tingling with delight at this clear indication that the US will imminently repudiate its recent craziness and get back to doing whatever it is that Lee Siegel regrets it has not been doing recently?
How strange it must be to live your life obsessively seeking such omens and portents in the routine choreography of American politicking.

David Sharples
David Sharples
1 month ago

“I own a Glock.”
Ok.. What model? What caliber? What sights do you have? Where did you purchase it? What range do you go to??
That’s like saying “I own a Toyota” without details. No one says that. She’s lying, everybody knows.

Martin M
Martin M
1 month ago
Reply to  David Sharples

You haven’t owned a Glock, have you? “What sights do you have?” Seriously? Unless you have set the thing up as a race-gun, you will have the little black u-shaped one with the adjustable white dot sitting in the middle that every Glock comes out of the factory with. Calibres matter up to a point, but Glock only makes guns with “man-stopper” rounds (or they did when I bought my most recent one). Even us “gun people” have to google what the model numbers mean (apart from the original Model 17 – 9mm, “standard” size).

Malcolm Knott
Malcolm Knott
1 month ago

Until the early years of the last century you could walk into a shop and buy a handgun in the UK, so long as you had the money to pay for it. But gun crime was almost unknown; a fraction of what it is today. So it’s people who kill, not guns. Not that that helps much. It only re-frames what remains a very serious problem.