Top Kamala Harris Surrogate Refuses to Say Her Mandatory Gun ‘Buy-Back’ Scheme is Off the Table

Kamala Harris surrogate, Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock, was in what he thought was friendly territory on Sunday morning when he appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press, hosted by Kristen Welker. 

Welker started out the interview with a reference to the shooting at Apalachee High School on September 4. This gave Warnock the chance to pontificate about the evil gun industry and its lackeys, putting kids at risk by resisting only minor abridgments of civil liberties that any right-thinking person would support.

Then, the unexpected happened. Welker asked Warnock if Kamala still stands by her pledge to institute a mandatory weapon buy-back plan.

Senator, let me ask you about some – some specific policies. In 2019, then-Senator Harris said she would support a mandatory gun buy-back program for assault weapons. Now her campaign says – and told me overnight again – she will not push for mandatory buy-backs but has expressed support for an assault weapons ban, expanded background checks, red flag laws. But do you think that’s a mistake? Should she also be, in your opinion, supporting a mandatory gun buy-back program?

Even though the media is now trying to memory hole this pledge, it is real. During the 2020 primary campaign, Kamala, Beto, and the vigorously heterosexual Corey Booker all favored mandatory gun buy-back schemes. Kamala was explicitly asked about the subject at a campaign appearance in Londonderry, Connecticut.

Kamala Harris said Friday she supports a mandatory buyback of military-style assault weapons, taking a more aggressive position than her main rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination.

“I think it’s a good idea,” she told reporters after a campaign event in Londonderry, New Hampshire.

“We have to work out the details — there are a lot of details — but I do” support a forced buyback, Harris said when asked about the policy. “We have to take those guns off the streets.”

That was not the only instance.

The relevant quote in this video starts at 0:44.

On her “Tonight Show” appearance on September 16, 2019 she said:

A buyback program is a good idea. Now we need to it the right way. And part of that has to be, you know, buy back and give people their value, the fiancial value of what they have and not just take things from people that have value without compensation to them. We need to do it the right way.

Politifact alleges that the “Harris campaign” told the New York Times that Kamala no longer supports sending stormtroopers door-to-door. If that were the case, you’d think Warnock could’ve answered with a resounding “no” to Welker’s question. He didn’t.

On NBC’s Meet the Press, Kristen Welker presses Sen. Raphael Warnock on confiscatory “buyback” programs as proposed by Kamala Harris in 2019. pic.twitter.com/LYrh8Nl1dQ

— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) September 8, 2024

What she got was word salad.

Listen, we – we’re not going to be able to get where we need to go without action in Congress. We’ve got to pass some laws to deal with this. Now, I was heartened by the fact that two years ago, we finally did a gun safety law: the Safer Communities Act. And it was the first gun safety law we passed in 30 years. 30 years. And it was modest, but it did save lives. But clearly, in the wake of what happened just the other day in Winder, Georgia, it’s not enough. And the best – the least we can do is move forward on the bipartisan spaces where ordinary people agree. Clearly, there’s a disconnect between what the people, the American people want and what they’re able to get out of their government. Again, 87% of Americans believe in background checks, and yet I hear politicians say that it’s not guns who kill people, it’s people who kill people. And yet we don’t even want to know who those people are.

Welker pressed on through the attempted filibuster.

KRISTEN WELKER: But Senator –

SEN. RAPHAEL WARNOCK: We – we won’t even support –

KRISTEN WELKER: Senator, just –

SEN. RAPHAEL WARNOCK: – common sense –

KRISTEN WELKER: – yes or no though –

SEN. RAPHAEL WARNOCK: – gun reform.

KRISTEN WELKER: – should she support that mandatory buy-back program? Just a yes or no.

SEN. RAPHAEL WARNOCK: Listen, look, as a pastor I’ve done back – buy-back programs. You can pick this issue or that issue. But I think that, again, there’s not one single thing that will make all of this go away.

The bottom line is that we don’t know where Kamala stands in 2024 on mandatory gun buy-back schemes. What we do know is that she made that part of her platform in the 2020 race, and she has never disavowed that position. Though her “campaign” says she no longer supports it, one of her leading surrogates refuses to give a yes or no answer; in fact, he refuses to acknowledge the question. 

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