Harris’s gun ownership is less surprising than her riff on who would be shot

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’s presidential debate about owning a firearm.

“I’m a gun owner, Tim Walz is a gun owner,” Harris said, referring to herself and her running mate, the governor of Minnesota. Then, with a chuckle, she added: “If somebody breaks into my house, they’re getting shot.”

The crowd laughed, as did the vice president.

“I probably should not have said that,” she added. “My staff will deal with that later.”

For many Americans, it’s likely that the surprising aspect of Harris’s comment was that she — a Black Democratic woman — has a gun in her house. Democrats are understood to be the anti-gun party, and Harris is that party’s nominee.

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 — traditionally a group unlikely to own a firearm — reported higher rates of gun ownership and in which Black Americans indicated a higher likelihood of owning a firearm.

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.

The increase was larger among Republicans, but Democrats reported higher rates of gun ownership, too.

That’s 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.

The uptick was particularly sharp among Black Americans.

While most Americans, including most Black Americans, don’t 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.

Which brings us to the other thing she said.

It is obviously true that if someone were to try to break into Harris’s house at this point, they would be shot. She’s the vice president! That fate wouldn’t 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.

But research has shown that injuries to intruders are a relatively uncommon result of gunfire in homes.

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 — particularly relative to the amount of time spent in a home by homeowners — it was more often those who lived in the house who were injured, either through accidents, assaults or self-harm.

“For every time a gun in the home was used in a self-defense or legally justifiable shooting,” the report concluded, “there were four unintentional shootings, seven criminal assaults or homicides, and 11 attempted or completed suicides.”

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’s residents.

In the moment, Harris’s focus wasn’t 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.

Whether this pitch will be effective is another question.