Harris surprises social media by saying she's a gun owner

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Kamala Harris: Walz and I are both gun owners, we’re not taking anyone’s guns away

Vice President Kamala Harris defends her position on the Affordable Care Act and Second Amendment rights during the ABC News Presidential Debate. (Courtesy: ABC News)

Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Harris surprised social media Tuesday night by claiming on the debate stage that she and running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz are gun owners. 

In Philadelphia Tuesday night, Republican presidential candidate former President Trump attempted to highlight how Harris has distanced herself from prior far-left stances since becoming the nominee.

"She has a plan to defund the police. She has a plan to confiscate everybody's gun. She planned to allow fracking in Pennsylvania or anywhere else," Trump said. "That's what her plan is, until just recently."

In response later, however, Harris shot back – and revealed she and Walz own guns. 

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Kamala Harris during the presidential debate in Philadelphia on Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2024.  (Doug Mills/The New York Times/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

"I've made very clear my position on fracking and then this business about taking everyone's guns away," Harris said. "Tim Walz and I are both gun owners. We're not taking anybody's guns away. So stop with the continuous lying about this stuff." 

Fox News Digital reached out to the Harris campaign on Wednesday asking for details on whether Harris still owns a gun and if so, what kind, where she keeps it and when was the last time she went shooting. 

The Harris campaign responded by citing CNN's previous reporting from 2019. 

At the time, a Harris campaign aide told CNN that Harris owned a hand gun that was purchased "years ago" which she keeps locked away as a responsible gun owner. 

"Kamala Harris and I are both gun owners," Walz wrote on X after the debate. "We’re not going to take away your Second Amendment rights — we’re going to prevent your kids from getting shot at school."

Harris' gun ownership revelation shocked social media users, many of whom shared past clips of Harris' TV appearances on the campaign trail in 2019 voicing support for a mandatory gun buyback program. 

"Harris is now claiming that her and Tim Walz are gun owners and she isn't going to take guns away from anyone which we all know is a lie," Wendy Patterson wrote to her more than 193,300 followers on X. "She also says that she's for fracking which we all know is a lie."

Donald Trump and Kamala Harris during the presidential debate in Philadelphia on Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2024. (Doug Mills/The New York Times/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

"Since when is Kamala Harris a gun owner?? When has she talked about that?" another X user, Arynne Wexler, wrote to her more than 28,400 followers.

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The National Rifle Association (NRA) shared a clip on X of Harris being asked by MSNBC what she would do about the millions of assault weapons in circulation. 

"We have to have a buyback program. And I support a mandatory buyback program," Harris said at the time. 

The NRA post included the message: "Kamala Harris is an existential threat to the Second Amendment." 

"This may be the most egregious lie in the history of presidential debates from Kamala Harris: 'We're not taking anybody’s guns away!'" the NRA wrote in another post, sharing a clip of the debate. 

Just four days before the debate, Harris herself wrote in a Sept. 6 post on X: "Together, we passed the first bipartisan law addressing gun violence prevention in nearly 30 years, but we have more work to do. We must pass an assault weapons ban, universal background checks, and red flag laws." 

Donald Trump gives a thumbs up in the spin room following the debate in Philadelphia on Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2024. (Hannah Beier/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The NRA responded Tuesday night, writing: "Kamala Harris last week: ‘We must pass an assault weapons ban.’ Kamala Harris this week: 'We're not taking anybody's guns away.'" 

While campaigning for president in 2019, then-Senator Harris called for banning assault weapons and universal background checks while stressing the need for stricter gun control laws. 

"I am a gun owner, and I own a gun for probably the reason a lot of people do – for personal safety," Harris, who previously served as San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general, said in August 2019, according to CNN. "I was a career prosecutor."

While taking questions from college students in the audience of "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon" four years ago, one student asked Harris if she believes in the mandatory buybacks of assault weapons and "how does that idea not go against fundamentally the Second Amendment?"

"I do believe that we need to do buybacks," Harris said. "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." 

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"So one, I'll tell you when elected president, if the United States Congress continues to fail to have the courage to do something about this, I'm prepared to take executive action and put in place a ban on the importation of assault rifles into our country," she said. 'But we still have to deal with the over 2 million assault weapons that are currently in the streets of America. And so a buyback program is a good idea."