Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris participated in a CNN town hall on Monday night. Among many highlights, the senator from California promised to take executive action on gun safety policies if Congress was unable to pass comprehensive legislation within her first 100 days in office.
And it wasn’t just a promise to do this, either. She previewed an entire plan. According to a campaign aid, as reported by CBS News, Harris plans to release the full proposal on Tuesday. For context, it’s worth noting that this is her second big policy reveal, the first being her proposal to increase teacher salaries using federal dollars.
CBS reports that they obtained a copy of the plan. According to CBS, the senator’s plan wants “near-universal” background checks and the ability to revoke licenses from dealers and gun manufacturers who break laws. By the way: Harris's plan would instruct the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to define a "gun dealer" pretty simply … and pretty strictly. Basically, a “gun dealer” would be anyone who sells five or more guns for profit in one year.
Perhaps most exciting, Harris’s plan aims to close the “loopholes” which allow people convicted of domestic violence to get guns. (Why this is not already on the books is pretty baffling—and dangerous.) As of right now, if you were married to someone convicted of domestic violence, lived with them, or had a child with them, they can’t purchase a gun.
That makes sense, but it isn’t truly comprehensive. And that’s where the “loophole” comes in: if your abuser is your boyfriend, girlfriend, or other forms of significant other that don’t fall into the above categories, the current laws fail you. Semi-relatedly, this would also prevent people who have arrest warrants from obtaining guns.
Perhaps nothing sells her idea better than hearing Harris put it in her own words. Here’s what she said in New Hampshire on Monday:
"Upon being elected, I will give the United States Congress 100 days to get their act together and have the courage to pass reasonable gun safety laws and if they fail to do it, then I will take executive action and specifically what I would do is put in a requirement for anyone who sells more than five guns a year, they are required to do background checks when they sell those guns. I will require for any gun dealer that breaks the law, the ATF take their license."
Additional plan details, as reported by Bloomberg, include reinstating an “assault weapons” ban that was in place for roughly a decade, from 1994 to 2004, making gun trafficking a federal offense, and banning people convicted of a federal hate crime from buying a firearm. She also wants to ban high-capacity ammunition clips.
To be clear: It’s horrifying that many (if not all) of these things are not already part of our gun safety laws. As reported by Bloomberg, the senator’s campaign has noted that her proposed executive actions wouldn’t come easily. Meaning: They’d probably face court challenges down the road. Their plan, as of now, would be to argue that the legal definitions the plan is hoping to change are open to interpretation.
You can check out the full stream below:
Harris and fellow Democrat Elizabeth Warren have now both released exciting, comprehensive proposals on issues people care about. Hopefully, the notably vague male candidates follow their lead.