Harris’s Support for Gun Control and Confiscation May Have Played a Key Role in Her Decisive Loss

Kamala Harris angry
(Santiago Mejia/San Francisco Chronicle via AP)

By the time you read this, Kamala Harris will have finally given her long delayed concession speech after decisively losing last night’s election. Oceans of digital ink will be spilled in the coming days and weeks analyzing why Trump won and Harris lost, but a poll I wrote about here a couple weeks ago seems to explains it pretty well. She appealed to many Americans in some key ways, but her campaign hit the rocks in trying to impress her gun control constituency.

The Popularity Of Supreme Court Decisions

The Marquette Law poll I wrote about (a reputable and fair polling entity) measured how happy Americans were with various Supreme Court decisions. At the time, the Harris campaign was flying high, convinced that the voting public was with her and ber message of joy.

Things that Harris was strong on at the height of her campaign’s popularity were generally liked by the American electorate. Protection for abortion was a big one, with 63% displeased with the Supreme Court for overturning Roe. Presidential immunity was also unpopular with a 61% disapproval rating. Marriage equality had 65% approval. Protecting access to abortion pills was favored by 66%.

But one Court decision really stood out at a whopping 70% approval rating: the NYSRPA v Bruen decision firmly protecting the individual right to carry firearms. The only court ruling that polled high was ending race-based college admissions (79%).

Snatching Defeat From The Jaws Of Victory

If you followed the brief Harris campaign at all, emphasizing abortion and other things the poll showed strong approval for were central to her strategy. She promoted herself to voters as a fighter for freedom, a protector of women, minorities, and the LGBT community from predation by evil people, the kinds who support Donald Trump. And that message appeared to be working well, both because enough people were upset about about the abortion ruling and because they believed that she’d “solve” it.

But she also took a hard line stance against gun rights one of the most popular rulings the Court handed down.

As voters saw her talk about another “assault weapons” ban, a light seemed to go on. How could a candidate who presented herself as a pro-freedom want to outlaw and confiscate firearms? That alienated a good 70% of the population, if you believe the polling, and likely hurt her more with the moderate Republicans she was heavily targeting to try to defeat Trump. Once they started questioning that, they likely learned more unsavory things about her past as a “progressive,” soft-on-crime prosecutor, while keeping innocent people in prison and jailing marijuana users.

At the end of the day, any lead she had evaporated when people realized that her message of freedom and joy was built on a foundation of sand.

A Lesson For Democrats

I don’t believe Harris was in any way a pro-freedom candidate. She may have been strong on some issues, but any look at her track record revealed a record that was wholly inconsistent with the campaign talking point.

If Democrats want to be the party of opposition to alleged theocracy, protecting women’s rights and such, they need to make their message of individual freedom more consistent and therefore plausible. At the end of the day, working to deny people the exercise of a key freedom — an enumerated civil right — that’s more popular than gay rights and access to abortion, simply doesn’t wash. Advocating for stricter gun control laws and confiscating firearms destroys any credibility that message may have had.

I’m personally not a fan of Donald Trump, but the fact is that people would much rather go with the devil they know than the devil they don’t, especially when the devil they don’t know has a documented track record of supporting policies that violate individual liberty.

The reality is, the Democrat Party has no real future if they keep the gun control industry and associated grifters as a key part of their coalition. Impressing the civilian disarmament lobby means alienating too much of the electorate these days. I doubt, however, that will change any time soon. It’s not easy to admit a hard truth like that and jettison a dedicated part of their base. People who want a centrist, pro-individual rights party to represent them are going to need to look elsewhere or start their own.

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3 thoughts on “Harris’s Support for Gun Control and Confiscation May Have Played a Key Role in Her Decisive Loss”

  1. She was a terrible candidate. Her only decent policy ideas were copied from Trump. She was so insecure that she felt the need to hide/lie about her real policy positions. And to be completely fair, any VP tied to the Puppet Admin would have been at an automatic disadvantage.

    Abortion isn’t the winning message you guys think it is. The Party of “Protect our democracy!” sure is uneasy about… wait for it… democracy! Why can’t you allow states to decide for themselves, also known as democracy? Why this tyrannical impulse to impose your beliefs on everyone else? Where have we heard that one before? Hmm… Think about it Jennifer.

    It’s time to repeal the FACE Act. We saw what happens when a tyrant’s handlers come into power. They use absurd, completely unnecessary laws like this to punish their ideological opponents. We already have trespassing, vandalism, and assault laws. We need to remove power from the federal government, and return that power to local governments. Anyone concerned about the next Hitler-like dictator should be in favor of that.

    Merrick Garland is a left wing zealot. Remember when they tried to sell him as a moderate for the Supreme Court? I’m not a big McConnell fan, but wow, thanks for that Mitch!

  2. When liberal progressive democrats and the fake news media spends months calling people racist, sexist, garbage and fascists. Including people of color, other women and young people it’s no wonder 72,000,000 voters rejected them at the ballot box.

  3. Daniel Schwartz

    A lot of Democrats are apparently signing up for the shooting sports these days. They did so out of fear, during the first Trump Administration, and many found that they liked it and wanted to stay.

    We can expect more of this during the second Trump Administration.

    I don’t like having a climate of fear, even a self-inflicted one. But the Democrats’ campaign to make people afraid of Trump has made gun-rights believers out of many… and this will continue.

    Briefly: the Biden Administration got people on the right to buy guns… and the Trump Administration will get people on the left to buy guns.

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