Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Kamala D. Harris said Monday night that she supports a mandatory federal gun buyback program like the one proposed by fellow candidate Beto O’Rourke.
During her appearance on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” Ms. Harris took a question from a Fordham University student, who asked whether she supported a mandatory buyback on “assault weapons.”
“I do believe that we need to do buybacks, and I’ll tell you why,” the California senator responded. “First of all, let’s be clear about what assault weapons are. They have been designed to kill a lot of human beings quickly. They are weapons of war with no place on the streets of a civil society. I’ve seen assault weapons kill babies and police officers.”
Ms. Harris said she planned to take executive action on gun control if Congress failed to act within 100 days of her presidency, including a federal ban on assault weapons and a “comprehensive background check requirement.”
“A buyback program is a good idea. Now we need to do it the right way,” she said. “And part of that has to be, you know, buy back and give people their value, the financial value of what they have and not just take things from people that have value without compensating them. We need to do it the right way.”
Ms. Harris‘ comments come less than a week after Mr. O’Rourke, a former Texas congressman who has proposed a mandatory buyback aided by local law enforcement, declared during the third Democratic primary debate, “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47.”
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