Kamala Harris Calls For Gun Ban

In her bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) has enlisted several former Hillary Clinton staffers[1]. Harris also appears intent on using the failed 2008 and 2016 presidential candidate’s gun control playbook. At a January 28 CNN “town hall,”[2] the presidential candidate delved into a full-throated attack on gun owners. When asked about violence perpetrated with firearms, Harris proclaimed that “there is no reason in a civil society that we have assault weapons around communities.” Harris is currently a cosponsor of Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s (D-Calif.) so-called “assault weapons” ban[3] legislation, which would ban scores of commonly-owned semi-automatic firearms including the AR-15 and all firearms magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition. Harris went on to share her support for the criminalization of the private transfer of firearms[4]. Most of Harris’s overwrought rhetoric is in line with what one can expect from the majority of the 2020 Democratic field. The data is clear, neither of the gun control proposals offered by Harris at the “townhall” would have an effect on criminal violence. A 2004 federally-funded study of the 1994 Clinton “assault weapons” ban determined that “the ban’s effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement.” This was, in part, because “AWs [assault weapons] and LCMs [large capacity magazines] were used in only a minority of gun crimes prior to the 1994 federal ban.” A 2013 Department of Justice memorandum determined that “Assault weapons are not a major contributor to gun crime” and that “a complete elimination of assault weapons would not have a large impact on gun homicides.” Subsequent research conducted by the RAND Corporation found no conclusive evidence that banning “assault weapons” or “large” capacity magazines has an effect on mass shootings or violent crime. So-called “universal” background

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