Kamala Harris once said police could pay surprise visits to legal gun owners' homes for safe storage checks

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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)

As San Francisco's district attorney, Kamala Harris told legal gun owners in her community that authorities could "walk into" their homes to inspect whether they were storing their firearms properly under a new law she helped draft.

"We're going to require responsible behaviors among everybody in the community, and just because you legally possess a gun in the sanctity of your locked home doesn't mean that we're not going to walk into that home and check to see if you're being responsible and safe in the way you conduct your affairs," Harris told a group of reporters in May 2007. 

The remarks came during a press conference introducing legislation that Harris helped draft, which sought to impose penalties for gun owners who fail to store their firearms properly at home. 

The bill, which at the time had just been introduced to the city's board of supervisors, was ultimately signed into law a few months later by then-San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. It was bundled with other gun control provisions, including a new requirement for legal gun distributors to submit an inventory to the chief of police every six months, and a ban on possessing guns – even legally – in public housing.

"San Francisco now has the strictest anti-gun laws in the county," Newsom said when he signed the new laws.

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A worker sets up a display of handguns on the floor of the exhibition hall ahead of the National Rifle Association annual meeting at the Indiana Convention Center in Indianapolis on April 25, 2019. (Daniel Acker/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

During the May 2007 press conference discussing the safe-storage bill, Harris said the new measure was about legislating "our values" in an attempt to "encourage certain kinds of behavior."

"When we create laws, it's not only about creating an opportunity, if you will, to prosecute someone for committing a crime, but more importantly, when we legislate our values, it's about trying to encourage certain types of behavior," she said at the time. 

Harris has faced criticism for statements she has made about her "values" heading into November. She told CNN last month they "have not changed," while simultaneously switching on long-held policies on almost every front. Since becoming the Democratic nominee for president, Harris has tried to paint a more moderate picture of herself in an attempt to distance herself from President Biden and appeal to a wider swath of voters. 

"As she said last night in her interview, her values have not changed. She said that over and over again," Lora Ries, a border security expert at the Heritage Foundation, told Fox News Digital after the CNN interview. "She is telling her base, 'Look, don't worry about what the campaign is saying right now. We just have to say that to try and get elected. But my values have not changed.'"

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Meanwhile, progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said Harris was dropping far-left policies she previously held "in order to win the election."

"Her views are not mine, but I do consider her a progressive," he told NBC's "Meet The Press" earlier this month. 

Vice President Kamala Harris raised eyebrows when telling CNN's Dana Bash that her "values haven't changed" after making complete reversals on far-left positions she held in 2019. (Screenshot/CNN)

During last week's presidential debate, Harris was asked about her shifting position on mandatory gun buybacks by ABC News moderator Linsey Davis, but she did not directly respond to the question until former President Donald Trump kept probing her about having "a plan to confiscate everybody's gun." Harris supported mandatory gun buybacks while running for president in 2019, saying they were "a good idea."

"This business about taking everyone's guns away. 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," Harris said in response to Trump's criticisms. 

James Singer, a Harris campaign spokesperson, told Fox News Digital that a potential Harris administration would "uphold and defend the law and rights of Americans, including the Second Amendment."

"The law in question, requiring sensible gun storage in homes, was upheld by Republican appointed judges in the ninth circuit and declined to be reviewed by the Supreme Court," he added. "As Vice President Harris said on the debate stage, she is a gun owner who supports common-sense safety laws that Donald Trump opposes."

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Semi-automatic firearms are displayed for sale on a shelf at the McBride Guns Inc. store on Aug. 25, 2023, in Austin, Texas. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

Harris has a long history of clashing with the National Rifle Association (NRA), considered by many as the nation's most powerful gun rights lobbying group. In 2009, the NRA challenged the San Francisco law prohibiting guns from public housing and won. However, the Supreme Court, before its recent shakeup under Trump, refused to hear an appeal from the NRA and other gun rights advocates after the 9th U.S. Circuit of Appeals rejected their pleas to relax San Francisco's safe storage law. 

"Law-abiding residents must keep their handguns inoperable or inaccessible precisely when they are needed most for self-defense — in the middle of the night, while the residents are asleep and decidedly not carrying," attorneys for the NRA and other gun rights advocates said at the time.

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Meanwhile, a ruling written by one of the 9th circuit judges determined the law "does not substantially prevent law-abiding citizens from using firearms to defend themselves in the home." The judge, appointed during the George W. Bush administration, added that San Francisco had demonstrated the law "serves a significant government interest by reducing the number of gun-related injuries and deaths from having an unlocked handgun in the home."