Ever since Kamala Harris proclaimed she’s a gun owner during her debate with Donald Trump, her allies in the media have been careful to include her comment in their coverage of her control plans. Snopes event went so far as to declare her statement “true”, though they couldn’t point to any real evidence that Harris was telling the truth when she made her claim, either in 2019 or in her current campaign. According to Snopes, “because Harris herself publicly confirmed she’s a gun owner, we rate this claim ‘True'”. That’s not fact-checking. That’s taking a politicians statement at face value, which is never a wise thing to do. 

More recently, Time ran a piece entitled “What We Know About Kamala Harris’ Gun Ownership”, which, more than anything, demonstrated we don’t know much at all about her personal experience with firearms. In fact, this is the only detail about her gun ownership that Time reported.

Harris previously mentioned that she owned a gun during her 2020 bid for the Democratic presidential nominee. She revealed she owned a gun for personal safety. A Harris aide told CNN this month that her gun was a pistol tiny enough to fit in a small purse.

The CNN report that ran on Friday included two more details: the gun she referred to in 2019 is the same one she supposedly owns now, and she keeps her gun “securely stored” at her home in Los Angeles. But CNN also reported that the Harris campaign “declined to share what year she first became a gun owner or any other details about the firearm and her ownership of it.”

So, we still don’t know much about Harris’ handgun, if it actually exists. Even if she doesn’t want to give free advertising to a particular gun company, there are still plenty of things she could tell us about her gun ownership, including:

• how often does she go to the range to practice and train with her gun? 
• Is her pistol available to all gun-buyers in California, or is it an “off roster” gun available only to law enforcement? 
• What’s the magazine capacity of the pistol? 
• Why did she choose to purchase a firearm? Was there a specific incident that caused her to become a gun owner, or just a general need to protect herself? 
• Why does she continue to own a gun now that she has Secret Service protection? 
• What factors did she consider when purchasing a gun? 
• Did she try out multiple guns before making her purchase?

 None of these are “gotcha” questions. If Harris really is a gun owner, they should all be easy to answer. 

I’ll assume for the sake of argument that Harris is telling the truth when she says she owns a pistol, even though she and her campaign talk about it the same way a lonely teen talks about his super hot girlfriend that totally exists but you haven’t met or seen because she lives in Canada and doesn’t have a smartphone so she can’t do video calls. I’d just like to know a little more, which shouldn’t be difficult given that Harris is now all about including her “biographical details” in her trite and tired talking points. Harris could easily provide more details about her gun ownership, but she refuses to do so. Instead of parroting back her claims, honest reporters should start asking themselves and the candidate herself why that is.