NC leaders praise Kamala Harris’ record on fighting gun violence

Much of Vice President Kamala Harris’ experience as a prosecutor was focused on reducing gun violence and holding accountable those responsible for gun crimes. North Carolina advocates believe she will continue these efforts if elected president. 

As Vice President Kamala Harris makes her case to voters on why they should elect her over Donald Trump in November’s election, her experience fighting gun violence at the local, state, and national levels is drawing praise from North Carolina leaders.

Harris, who previously served as the District Attorney of San Francisco, Attorney General of California, and a US Senator, has persistently made tackling gun violence and reducing violent crime a top priority in her career, a message that could resonate in places like Charlotte, where homicides have increased by 40% from 2023.

Charlotte’s struggles with violence come despite a 15% drop in violent crime across the country this year, according to an FBI report released in June. 

“Charlotte is one of the few metropolitan areas where that has not been the case, and so we really need to zero in on making sure that we keep our communities safe. And having someone who’s done that at the local, state, and federal level is going to be absolutely essential,” Charles DeLoach, an attorney and the vice chair of the Mecklenburg County Young Democrats, said. “Kamala Harris had an incredible record as a DA and as an attorney general in California.” 

Gun violence prevention and work as a prosecutor

In 2004, Harris’ first year as the District Attorney of San Francisco, the city faced a homicide crisis. That year, there were 11.57 homicides per 100,000 people, far higher than the average in California (6.67) and nationally (5.50).

“Our city’s neighborhoods are plagued by an increasing epidemic of gun crimes and gun violence. We have had 39 homicides in San Francisco this year – almost two murders a week,” Harris said in May 2004, emphasizing the number of murders in the first five months of the year  “Twenty-three victims of these homicides have been people under the age of 30, and 26 of these killings have been due to gun violence.” 

She took steps to tackle gun violence and hold those who commit violent crimes accountable, with convictions for these offenses rising 92% during the first five years she was DA. During her tenure as DA, Harris also opposed releasing people charged with gun crimes before trial, and made prosecuting people who commit domestic abuse a priority.

By the time she left the DA’s Office in San Francisco in 2011, following her election as California Attorney General (AG),  the city’s homicide rate had declined by nearly half compared to the year she took office and fallen in line with California and national averages at the time.

Harris continued her work against gun violence as California AG, advocating for the state’s red flag law, which allowed for firearms to be taken out of the hands of those perceived to be a threat to themselves or other people. During her time as AG, the state was also able to clear the backlog to test DNA for unsolved crimes for the first time. 

“Public safety is too important not to embrace innovation and adopt technology where needed. Crime scene evidence is too important to sit unanalyzed for months, while the victims await justice,” Harris said at the time.

How Harris’ record at the national level could help Charlotte

Greg Jackson is the Executive Director of Heal Charlotte, a nonprofit that aims to fight gun violence, support young people in the community, and provide housing opportunities. Much of Jackson’s work revolves around the issue of gun violence.

“Most of the kids I’ve worked with have been directly impacted by gun violence, and I’ve had one mentee that I lost to gun violence,” he said.

In January, Jackson participated in a panel with Harris centered around young people who’ve been impacted by gun violence. He says he brought some of the Charlotte-based youth he works with to the panel, where some of them got to engage with Harris. 

“In the United States of America today, the number one killer of our children in America is gun violence — not car accidents, not some form of cancer. Gun violence is the number one killer of the children of America,” Harris told the crowd.

Harris’ visit to the Queen City took place just days after a shooting on New Year’s Eve injured five people in Uptown. The shooter was just 19 years old. With 61 murders between the beginning of the year and the end of June, 2024 has marked the deadliest first half of a year in the city since 2015.

Jackson said he was impressed with the work of the Biden-Harris administration, and believed those efforts would continue with Harris as president.

“I thought that some of the ideas that she has are very innovative, as far as approaching gun violence,” he explained. 

He believes Harris will continue the work that the Biden administration started with the Office of Gun Violence Prevention (OGVP), which was the first of its kind and was created in part to help implement President Biden’s Safer Communities Act (SCA) that passed following the mass killing of 23 people at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas in 2022. Harris oversees the office and its mission, which is to help implement the Safer Communities Act and President Biden’s executive orders designed to tackle gun violence. 

The Safer Communities Act provided $700 million to support red-flag laws, which can allow for the temporary removal of firearms from a person who is deemed a risk to themselves or to other people. The legislation also allows law enforcement to take firearms from unmarried partners who are domestic abusers. Previously, law enforcement could only remove firearms from a spouse who committed domestic abuse.

Scarlet Hollingsworth, a volunteer with Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit organization that advocates for reducing gun violence and gun safety legislation, believes Harris’ experience fighting gun violence as Vice President will help inform her work as president, if she wins in November.

“Knowing that she has helped lead one of the strongest gun safety administrations in American history, and knowing that she is going to continue to build on that transformative progress, I know that we are in very good hands,” Hollingsworth told Cardinal & Pine. “From what I’ve seen so far, she doesn’t just go at the surface level of what is causing the gun violence. She goes deeper, and that kind of goes and speaks to the creation of the Office of [Gun] Violence Prevention that has been created at the federal level.”

Jackson echoed Hollingsworth, highlighting the importance of the federal office and the  need to continue its work in the next presidential administration. 

“We need Kamala Harris to be in office…just to continue the efforts that were started in the Biden administration with the [Office of Gun Violence Prevention],” Jackson said.

Since launching her campaign, Harris has repeatedly made clear she plans to fight gun violence if she’s elected. At her first rally as a candidate in Wisconsin last month, she called for universal background checks, as well as a ban on assault weapons.

If she were able to pass such a policy, it would be the capstone of a decades-long fight to reduce gun violence—one that started across the country in San Francisco.