Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris expressed her support in 2019 for mandatory gun buyback programs for “assault weapons,” but experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the programs are ineffective at taking guns off the street and illegal.
Harris expressed her support for mandatory gun buybacks for “assault weapons” during her bid for the Democratic nomination for president in 2019 at a New Hampshire campaign event, with her proposal meaning Americans would have to turn in guns deemed “assault weapons” in exchange for compensation, according to Bloomberg. However, confiscating so-called “assault weapons” with a buyback program would likely violate the Second Amendment due to the necessity to establish an underlying ban and would also be ineffective due to Americans’ non-compliance with similar laws in the past, experts told the DCNF.
“I think the constitutionally relevant question is whether or not banning civilian possession of a certain type of firearm is constitutional,” Amy Swearer, senior legal fellow at the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation, told the DCNF about a ban underpinning a mandatory buyback program. “Is that underlying statute banning possession or sales constitutional? And assuming we’re talking about so-called assault weapons, which are really just semi-automatic firearms with certain cosmetic features that don’t affect lethality or functionality in any capacity, the answer is absolutely not.”
“It’s not constitutional… I think that’s the constitutional issue, not whether or not you’re getting your money back for what’s been confiscated, but it’s the government confiscating it in the first place.” Swearer continued.
The evidence supporting the effectiveness of gun buyback programs in the U.S. is also thin, with little evidence showing that voluntary programs reduce gun-related violence and crime, according to a 2023 meta-analysis done by the RAND Corporation. The study also suggests that a mandatory buyback program similar to those done in countries like Australia and the United Kingdom would face challenges in the U.S. due to “the number of firearms typically categorized by law as assault weapons.”
Swearer drew a comparison between Harris’ proposal and the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban, which made it illegal to “manufacture, transfer, or possess a semiautomatic assault weapon,” including a ban on AR-15’s explicitly, bans on magazines holding over 10 rounds of ammunition and certain features, including modifications like pistol grips and barrel shrouds.
“I think if the Supreme Court were to look at something like the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban today and keep in mind, the Supreme Court did not rule on the constitutionality of that ban at the time, and that was just a ban on future sales… I think almost certainly that it would be unconstitutional,” Swearer told the DCNF.
The 1994 Assault Weapons Ban expired in 2004, with all legal challenges to it failing, never seeing a review from the Supreme Court, according to the Congressional Research Service.
Harris said in 2022 that an “assault weapon” constitutes “a weapon of war” and that their purpose is to “kill a lot of human beings quickly,” according to CNN. Swearer said the term “assault weapon” refers to semi-automatic rifles with features that “don’t actually matter in terms of any measure of lethality,” such as a barrel shroud that protects users’ hands from heat or a pistol grip, which some prefer for comfort reasons.
“As we have argued repeatedly in our multiple challenges to various ‘assault weapons’ bans, semi-automatic, centerfire rifles are not only bearable arms but are commonly possessed for lawful purposes,” Second Amendment Foundation Executive Director Adam Kraut told the DCNF. “Given that, we do not believe that Harris’ [buybacks] would be constitutional. Moreover, the government cannot buy back something it never possessed in the first place. It likely would constitute a taking, which would be subject to any number of legal actions.”
Americans would also likely be slow to comply with any ban or mandatory buyback on “assault weapons,” according to Swearer.
“Americans are notoriously noncompliant with these types of arbitrary and capricious gun laws,” Swearer told the DCNF. “So when you look at other similar types of prohibitions coupled with buybacks, or not with buybacks, Americans really are not keen on turning in their weapons that, 10 seconds ago, were legal possessions that they spent money on, whether or not the government’s going to pay them to get those back.”
Illinois also passed a ban in 2023 on sales of “assault weapons” and “high-capacity magazines,” requiring owners of “assault weapons” to register their firearm before January 1, 2024. Since the law came into effect, a majority of sheriffs in the state have declined to enforce the restrictions, according to Courthouse News Service.
David Kopel, research director of the Independence Institute, told the DCNF that a forced buyback would likely entail a roundup of firearms from American homes, which would be a risky undertaking.
“There are places where so-called ‘assault weapon’ laws have been enacted and grandfathered owners have been told, ‘You can keep your gun as long as you register it,’” Kopel told the DCNF. “The actual registration rate is about 1% or 2% of the total number of those firearms owned. So her program can’t succeed without forcible house-to-house searches, which would be very dangerous for both law enforcement and the general public.”
There were an estimated 393 million civilian-owned firearms in the U.S. in 2017, with only 6.06 million of those being registered, according to a study conducted by the Small Arms Survey.
“It is unlikely that the majority of gun owners would comply with a mandatory ‘gun buyback’ or compensated confiscation,” Kraut told the DCNF. “As of 2020, there were 20 million AR-style firearms in the United States, which is only a small category of firearms that politicians refer to as ‘assault weapons.’”
The evidence is inconclusive on whether or not “assault weapon” bans reduce total homicides and firearm-related homicides, according to a meta-analysis in 2024 by the RAND Corporation. The same study found that data was inconclusive on whether high-capacity magazine bans reduced firearms-related deaths.
The Harris campaign has since walked back the vice president’s commitment to a mandatory gun buyback program, campaign officials told The New York Times in July. However, Harris’ history of support for anti-gun legislation has made critics skeptical that her change in policy is genuine, including Swearer.
“So when you look at back when she was attorney general in California, she signed on to some of the opposing briefs in D.C. v. Heller,” Swearer told the DCNF. “[Which] essentially says that we don’t think there is any individual right to keep in mind whatsoever, that you don’t even have an individual right to possess handguns in the first place. So I think this sort of statement, or attempt to walk anything back with respect to firearms at this point, is probably more political than genuine, and I think that’s because the consistent refrain of her career has been the antithesis of walking gun control policies back.”
In 2008, Harris signed onto an amicus brief as a friend of the court that argued for the handgun ban in the landmark Supreme Court case D.C. v. Heller to be reinstated, according to the brief. The amicus brief also argued that “the Second Amendment provides only a militia-related right to bear arms” and that it “does not apply to legislation passed by state or local government.”
Harris still supports a ban on assault weapons despite her campaign’s policy change on a mandatory buyback, according to the NYT.
“The word ‘buyback’ is a lie,” Kopel told the DCNF. “The same way ‘assault weapon’ is a lie, because the government never owned the guns in the first place… This is confiscation, pure and simple, and there’s allegedly some compensation offered, but it’s a forcible taking of property.”
The Harris Campaign did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
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