Gun control enthusiast Vice President Kamala Harris is making her new big push for gun control. It is as stale and unoriginal as every other Democratic gun control push, and it shows just how the Democratic gun control agenda is running out of juice.
Harris was named by President Joe Biden to lead the new Office of Gun Violence Prevention, which was formed in September. You may remember that Harris’s view of gun control is that the president should be able to overrule Congress by executive order to take people’s guns. She wants a “mandatory gun buyback program” and thinks the president should be able to impose that by dictatorial decree. It was only natural that Biden put her in charge of gun control.
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Three months into her new responsibility, Harris has come out with her first few ideas. Naturally, she wants to ban so-called "assault weapons" and high-capacity magazines and to "strengthen" background checks, two frequent Democratic proposals that are as vague as they are useless. They do next to nothing to prevent criminals from acquiring guns, including "assault weapons." They simply put additional burdens on law-abiding civilians.
Notably, though, the big push here is Harris asking state legislators to take up these proposals, not for the federal government. Even Harris, who adores the idea of the executive branch wielding monarchic power, sees that there is no avenue nor appetite for a grand federal gun control push. She wants to punt it to the states, where that power already belongs and where Democrats have already been talking about "assault weapons" bans and other gun control cliches for years before this.
Harris and Biden are going through the motions here, but it is clear that the surge in gun ownership during the pandemic (partially due to Democrats ignoring gun crimes from actual criminals) has changed the political landscape on this question. Democrats have simply run out of ammunition, and it appears that even they have pushed gun control way down on the list of priorities.