During a streamed town-hall discussion hosted by Oprah Winfrey, Vice President Kamala Harris offered a bit more detail on her comment at this month\u2019s presidential debate about owning a firearm.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a gun owner, Tim Walz is a gun owner,\u201d Harris said, referring to herself and her running mate, the governor of Minnesota. Then, with a chuckle, she added: \u201cIf somebody breaks into my house, they\u2019re getting shot.\u201d<\/p>\n
The crowd laughed, as did the vice president.<\/p>\n
\u201cI probably should not have said that,\u201d she added. \u201cMy staff will deal with that later.\u201d<\/p>\n
For many Americans, it\u2019s likely that the surprising aspect of Harris\u2019s comment was that she \u2014 a Black Democratic woman \u2014 has a gun in her house. Democrats are understood to be the anti-gun party, and Harris is that party\u2019s nominee.<\/p>\n
The 2022 General Social Survey (GSS), though, indicates that about a fifth of Black women have guns in their homes or garages. This is after a trend over the past few years in which urban Democrats \u2014 traditionally a group unlikely to own a firearm \u2014 reported higher rates of gun ownership and in which Black Americans indicated a higher likelihood of owning a firearm.<\/p>\n
We looked at this in November, tracking the national GSS results over time. After years of decline and then stasis, gun ownership ticked up, in part thanks to the tumult seen in 2020.<\/p>\n
The increase was larger among Republicans, but Democrats reported higher rates of gun ownership, too.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s in part because rural Democrats (a relatively small group) reported higher ownership rates and partly because urban Democrats (a much larger group) were more likely to say they had a gun at home.<\/p>\n
The uptick was particularly sharp among Black Americans.<\/p>\n
While most Americans, including most Black Americans, don\u2019t have a gun at home, they are more likely to have one now than in years past. This increase has been particularly pronounced among urban Democrats and Black people, two categories that obviously have some overlap. Categories that also include Harris.<\/p>\n
Which brings us to the other thing she said.<\/p>\n
It is obviously true that if someone were to try to break into Harris\u2019s house at this point, they would be shot. She\u2019s the vice president! That fate wouldn\u2019t be a function of Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff winging an intruder with his Glock; it would be multiple Secret Service agents letting their training kick in.<\/p>\n
But research has shown that injuries to intruders are a relatively uncommon result of gunfire in homes.<\/p>\n
A 1998 study attempted to document the extent to which household firearms were used in efforts to repel intruders. No doubt in part because such intrusions are rare \u2014 particularly relative to the amount of time spent in a home by homeowners \u2014 it was more often those who lived in the house who were injured, either through accidents, assaults or self-harm.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor every time a gun in the home was used in a self-defense or legally justifiable shooting,\u201d the report concluded, \u201cthere were four unintentional shootings, seven criminal assaults or homicides, and 11 attempted or completed suicides.\u201d<\/p>\n
Put another way, it is much more likely that a Black woman would have a gun in her home than it is that a gun would be used to stop an intruder instead of harming one of the home\u2019s residents.<\/p>\n
In the moment, Harris\u2019s focus wasn\u2019t the promotion of gun safety but, instead, to mollify concerns that, if elected, she would seek to strip firearms from Americans. She has a gun! She gets it! The goal was obviously to erode the number of reasons skeptical voters might have for voting for Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
Whether this pitch will be effective is another question.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
During a streamed town-hall discussion hosted by Oprah Winfrey, Vice President Kamala Harris offered a bit more detail on her comment at this month\u2019s presidential debate about owning a firearm. \u201cI\u2019m a gun owner, Tim Walz is a gun owner,\u201d Harris said, referring to herself and her running mate, the governor of Minnesota. Then, with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":9882,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9881\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}