California senator and 2020 presidential candidate Kamala Harris on Monday proposed serious action to curb gun violence in the country should she be elected president.
Harris announced her plans during a CNN town hall, saying that in case Congress fails to pass major gun laws and close loopholes, she would do so in the first 100 days of her presidency. Harris’ plan proposes including universal background checks and repealing a law that prevents gun violence victims from holding gunmakers and dealers responsible for their losses.
“There are people in Washington, D.C., supposed leaders, who have failed to have the courage to reject a false choice which says you’re either in favor of the Second Amendment or you want to take everyone’s guns away,” the senator said, according to Politico.
Harris, a former prosecutor and California attorney general, has made gun-related issues the focus of her campaign. In a recent town hall event, she invoked the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school shooting, saying that “somebody should have required all those members of Congress to go in a room, in a locked room, no press, no one, nobody else, and look at the autopsy photographs of those babies.”
Harris then stresses gun-control has become a political issue.
As California’s attorney general, Harris took on a 2014 ruling that deemed unconstitutional the state’s 10-day waiting period for gun purchases and backed legislation to reinforce the assault weapons ban and close the “bullet button” loophole.
Harris’ campaign said Monday that the executive action announced by the senator would require everyone selling five or more guns a year to run background checks on all their firearms sales. It would further rescind the licenses of gun-makers and dealers that break the law, prevent fugitives with arrest warrants and people convicted of domestic violence from buying guns.
Harris would likewise work to ensure that gun trafficking is a federal crime and that high-capacity magazines are outlawed.
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