Vice President Kamala Harris is famous for her flip-flopping to win votes. She is currently courting the votes of gun owners by claiming that she owns a gun and any intruder in her home would be shot. According to Amy Swearer at The Daily Signal, this is what Harris was saying while district attorney of San Francisco in 2007:
We’re going to require responsible
behaviors among everybody in the community, and just because you legally
possess a gun in the sanctity of your locked home doesn’t mean that we’re not
going to walk into that home and check to see if you’re being responsible and safe
in the way you conduct your affairs.
Even
though Harris voiced support for Columbia v. Heller defending a ban on handgun
possession in Washington D.C., Swearer found it “shocking” that Harris “so
brazenly and vindictively threatened to violate gun owners’ other
constitutional rights.” Since Harris is not an “amateur on criminal law who can
claim ignorance,” she should know that “the Fourth Amendment protects people
from unreasonable searches and seizures.” Swearer continued, “As a general
rule, the government can’t search a person (or his or her property) without a
warrant or absent probable cause that a crime has been committed.”
According
to Swearer, Harris should also know that “there’s no ‘Second Amendment loophole’
to the Fourth Amendment. There’s no asterisk with fine print excluding gun
owners from the rest of the Bill of Rights.” Swearer explained, “The government
can’t force us to pick and choose between our rights, nor can it condition the
exercise of one right on the waiver of another.”
Americans have the right to keep and bear
arms, and we have the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures.
We also have the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures while
keeping and bearing arms.
Harris’ comments should rightly terrify
Americans. You don’t have to be a gun owner or even like guns to see how
dangerous this theory of governance is to a free society, and how dramatically
it undermines constitutional norms.
If Harris is willing to unilaterally waive
gun owners’ Fourth Amendment rights, it’s not unreasonable to ask what other
rights she’d be willing to unilaterally waive, and for whom.
Can the government require all who peaceably
assemble to forfeit any right against excessive bail?
Can it quarter soldiers in the homes of
people who petition for redress of their grievances?
May it prohibit the free exercise of
religion, but just for those who insist on their right to trial by an impartial
jury?
Any
American who has studied the Bill Rights knows that the correct answer is NO.
Our Constitution does not work that way for anyone.
This
is why Harris should never come close to becoming President of the United
States. VOTE TRUMP!
