When the Democrats released their party platform earlier this week, I wrote about the fact that admist the many calls for gun control, there wasn't a single mention of even half-hearted support for the Second Amendment. Reason's Jacob Sullum has picked up on that was well, and says it's a sea change from previous election cycles. In the past, Democrats generally coupled their calls for "assault weapon" bans, "universal" background checks, and other anti-gun policies with vague statements of support for hunters or "responsible" gun owners, but those days are long gone.

 That treatment of this subject is similar to the approach that Democrats took in 2016, when their platform mentioned "the rights of responsible gun owners" but did not elucidate the basis of those rights, and in 2020, when the platform did not go even that far. The 2016 platform devoted a paragraph to gun control, which became two paragraphs in 2020 and has now expanded to five. Neither of the two most recent platforms so much as alludes to respect for gun rights.

By contrast, Democrats in 2000 promised to "respect the rights of hunters, sportsmen, and legitimate gun owners." Four years later, after the gun issue, including Al Gore's support for banning "assault weapons," was widely blamed for contributing to George W. Bush's election, Democrats promised to "protect Americans' Second Amendment right to own firearms." The 2008 and 2012 platforms included similar language, in both cases explicitly invoking the Second Amendment, which disappeared in the 2016 platform and now does not even seem like a dim memory for Democrats.

This wasn't just an oversight on the part of Democrats. Just fourteen years ago, in 2010, fully 25% of Democrats in Congress had "A" ratings from the NRA. Now? The NRA has endorsed Alaska Democrat Mary Peltola this cycle, but she's the only Democrat running for federal office who's received the support of the organization. And Peltola is hardly in lockstep with the NRA and other 2A groups. She's said she's open to things like "universal" background checks, waiting periods, and gun bans for under-21s. 

As the Democrats have fully embraced the gun control lobby (and its tens of millions of dollars in campaign spending), the party has abandoned almost every pretense of support for the Second Amendment. And as Sullum writes, with Kamala Harris, Democrats have a longtime anti-gun advocate at the top of the ticket. 

Although Vice President Kamala Harris' current campaign website is short on specific policy positions, the platform confirms what we already knew: She does not see the Constitution as an obstacle to her gun control agenda. Back in 2019, when Harris was vying with Biden for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, she promised to impose new gun policies—including "universal background checks, an assault weapons ban, and the repeal of the NRA's corporate gun manufacturer and dealer immunity bill"—by executive fiat if Congress failed to approve such legislation during her first 100 days in office.

That was too much even for Biden. "There's no constitutional authority to issue that executive order when they say 'I'm going to eliminate assault weapons,'" he said. "You can't do it by executive order any more than Trump can do things when he says he can do it by executive order." Asked about that comment during a Democratic presidential debate, Harris laughed and blithely replied: "Well, I mean, I would just say, hey, Joe, instead of saying 'no, we can't,' let's say 'yes, we can.'"

Biden objected. "Let's be constitutional," he said. "We've got a Constitution." He also suggested that Harris should "check with constitutional scholars" about whether her plan was consistent with the separation of powers.

While Biden aspired to "be constitutional," in other words, Harris replied, in essence: "Constitution, schmonstitution. Why should that get in the way of my agenda?"

Back when Harris was the District Attorney in San Francisco, she co-authored a brief in support of D.C.'s ban on handguns, arguing that the Second Amendment didn't protect an individual right to keep and bear arms. There's no reason to believe she's changed her mind, especially when she's argued that as president she could enact a sweeping gun ban with the stroke of a pen. 

Joe Biden has his own history of trying to create new gun laws via executive orders and agency rules, and as Sullum says, there's no reason to believe that a Harris/Walz administration would be any different. In fact, given Harris's previous statements, she's likely willing to go even farther than what we've seen from the White House over the past four years.