Vice President Kamala Harris said Friday while in Chicago for a gun control convention that the solutions to gun violence in America “don’t require a whole lot of creativity.”
“So much of this issue can be addressed by common sense, reasonable gun safety laws, but we need elected officials who have the courage to act,” Harris told the crowd gathered at McCormick Place for Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund’s annual Gun Sense University conference.
Her visit came one day after Everytown’s political arm and its subsidiaries Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action joined with other gun control groups in endorsing Biden and Harris for reelection.
The vice president touted the bipartisan gun violence legislation President Joe Biden signed into law in June 2022 that seeks to toughen background checks for the youngest firearm buyers, beef up penalties on gun traffickers and disburse money to states and communities to improve school safety and mental health initiatives.
Harris called it “the first meaningful gun legislation in 30 years.”
“It is historic,” she said. “And it is a drop in the bucket. We still have so much to do.”
The vice president called for stronger red flag laws and background checks and an end to legal immunity for gun manufacturers in her 30-minute conversation with actor Jason George and Moms Demand Action Executive Director Angela Ferrell-Zabala.
Harris didn’t directly mention gun violence in Chicago, nor did she say anything about Friday’s Illinois Supreme Court ruling that upheld Illinois’ ban on high-powered guns and high-capacity magazine. She did call for a federal ban on so-called assault weapons.
“It is reasonable to say that a weapon of war, a weapon that was literally designed to kill a lot of human beings quickly, has no place on the streets of a civil society,” Harris said.
Harris has been keeping an active political schedule in recent weeks speaking to what the White House has called “key constituencies” for the reelection effort. That includes two previous visits in the last month to Chicago, where she addressed Rainbow/PUSH Coalition on one occasion and Latino organization UnidosUS on another.
Little more than a week ago, speaking at a campaign fundraiser in Milwaukee, Harris noted that “the scourge of gun violence” has become the leading cause of death for children in the United States.
“Right now, in our country, 1 in 5 Americans has a family member that was killed by gun violence. Yet we have these feckless, so-called leaders who don’t have the courage to agree that it’s a false choice to say you’re either in favor of the Second Amendment or you want to take everyone’s guns away,” she said at the Aug. 3 event.
On Thursday, Everytown was part of a first-of-its-kind joint announcement by gun control groups to endorse the Democratic presidential ticket. Other groups joining in the endorsement were GIFFORDS, Brady PAC, Team ENOUGH and the Community Justice Action Fund.
John Feinblatt, Everytown’s president, said Biden and Harris have demonstrated “unflinching commitment to ending gun violence” and cited Biden’s signature on bipartisan gun safety legislation and executive orders including a crackdown on so-called “ghost guns” that are homemade and lack serial tracing numbers.
The White House said that ahead of next year’s election, each of the organizations “have robust plans to educate and mobilize their broad coalition” and called them “key to a Biden-Harris victory.” The groups have an estimated overall membership of 15 million.
The endorsement by the gun control groups is part of a Biden strategy that has included sewing up joint endorsements from labor unions and abortion rights organizations to show support among key Democratic constituencies even as some Democrats have questioned whether he should run for a second term.
Harris’ address to the gun control group came as the Illinois Supreme Court earlier Friday upheld the state constitutionality of a Democratic-backed ban on high-powered firearms and large-capacity ammunition magazines. The law still faces a Second Amendment challenge in federal court.
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Her visit to Chicago also marked the third anniversary of selection by Biden as his running mate. Before her arrival the reelection campaign issued a memorandum lauding her “as an essential partner in the ticket’s electoral success” in 2020 and “a strong political force for 2024.”
“Harris remains uniquely popular with the key constituencies that make up the Biden-Harris coalition that resulted in the most votes for a presidential ticket in American history in 2020,” the campaign said. It also labeled her “a fearless voice on many of the issues that are most important to the core voters in the Biden-Harris coalition.”
The campaign also described her as a prolific fundraiser, contending that for several high-dollar events including one held during her July 24 visit to Chicago, “we had to turn off the registration link because the venue couldn’t physically fit more people.”
Harris’ husband, Douglas Emhoff, was scheduled to be in Chicago Friday for a campaign fundraiser associated with the evening’s Bruce Springsteen concert at Wrigley Field.
In an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” earlier Friday, Gov. J.B. Pritzker praised the administration as he acknowledged Harris’s visit.
“This is an administration that truly has fought for gun safety, probably the best administration on that subject in my lifetime,” Pritzker said.
In her talk at McCormick Place, Harris praised the activists gathered at the convention, which is focused on training and organizing people to fight for gun control, and highlighted the “critical” role young people have in the effort.
Harris recalled visiting the sites of many mass shootings. She visited the scene of the Highland Park mass shooting the day after it occurred in July 2022.
“There is literally blood on the streets. The failure to act is not without consequence,” she said. “We need these so-called leaders to hear the people and act.”
jsheridan@chicagotribune.com
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VP Kamala Harris touts gun control record while in Chicago - Chicago Tribune
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