US Vice-President Kamala Harris has spoken of her willingness to use her gun if an intruder entered her home.
“If somebody breaks into my house, they’re getting shot,” she said in a jokey exchange during a livestreamed event in Michigan with host Oprah Winfrey on Thursday.
After a laugh, the Democratic presidential nominee continued: “I probably shouldn’t have said that, but my staff will deal with that later.”
Harris, who highlighted during the recent presidential debate that she was a gun-owner, went on to reiterate that she supported a ban on assault weapons.
A firearm of that type was “literally designed to be a tool of war,” she told Winfrey. “It has no place on the streets of a civil society.”
When questioned by Oprah Winfrey about whether she had been a gun owner “for a while,” Kamala Harris confirmed that she had.
Harris emphasized her support for the Second Amendment, which guarantees the right to bear arms in the U.S. However, she also outlined her stance on banning assault weapons, pointing to the country’s ongoing issue with school shootings as a critical reason for the need for such restrictions.
It was “bone-chilling” for a child to have to go through a drill for such an incident, Harris said. “It doesn’t have to be this way,” she added.
After one of the most recent US mass shootings, a 14-year-old boy has been charged with murdering four people at a high school in Georgia.
During Thursday’s event with Winfrey – who also spoke at last month’s Democratic National Convention – Harris was also questioned on topics including immigration and the economy.
Celebrities including Jennifer Lopez featured in the session, which was watched by about 300,000 people.
Harris’s gun ownership has been a matter of public record since 2019, when she said: “I own a gun for probably the reason a lot of people do – for personal safety. I was a career prosecutor.”
Kamala Harris’s ownership of firearms gained widespread attention in the U.S. following her recent presidential debate with Republican contender Donald Trump.
The 2024 showdown marked the first time the subject surfaced during the campaign.
During the debate, Harris refuted Trump’s allegation that she intended to seize guns from all citizens if she were to become president.
She clarified that both she and her vice-presidential candidate, Tim Walz—an avid hunter—were gun owners themselves.