The BDN Opinion section operates independently and does not set news policies or contribute to reporting or editing articles elsewhere in the newspaper or on bangordailynews.com
Amy Swearer is a senior legal fellow in the Heritage Foundation’s Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not reflect any institutional position for Heritage or its Board of Trustees.
It’s hard to reconcile Vice President Kamala Harris’ friendly overtures to gun owners with the footage that recently emerged of a 2007 press conference in which the then-district attorney of San Francisco said cops could conduct random home inspections to enforce compliance with the city’s new “safe storage” laws.
Yes, really.
She told reporters:
“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.”
On the one hand, it’s not particularly surprising to hear Harris voice her support for a policy that, even as gun control wish lists go, is pretty extreme. This press conference occurred, after all, just one year before she signed onto an amicus brief in District of Columbia v. Heller that defended the district’s complete ban on handgun possession and argued against any constitutional right to own guns in the first place.
She may now begrudgingly pay lip service to the Second Amendment and tout her status as a gun owner, but it’s no secret that she remains perfectly willing to trample on Americans’ right to keep and bear arms.
It’s still nonetheless shocking that, as San Francisco’s chief prosecutor, she so brazenly and vindictively threatened to violate gun owners’ other constitutional rights, as well.
Harris isn’t some amateur on criminal law who can claim ignorance. She knows (or at least should know) that the Fourth Amendment protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures. As a general rule, the government can’t search people (or their property) without a warrant or absent probable cause that a crime has been committed.
Government officials certainly can’t just waltz into private homes whenever they please, going on fishing expeditions through our closets and attics, looking for evidence of wrongdoing.
She should also know that there’s no Second Amendment loophole to the Fourth Amendment. There’s no asterisk with fine print excluding gun owners from the rest of the Bill of Rights. The government can’t force us to pick and choose between our rights, nor can it condition the exercise of one right on the waiver of another.
Americans have the right to keep and bear arms, and we have the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. We also have the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures while keeping and bearing arms.
Harris’ comments should rightly terrify Americans. You don’t have to be a gun owner or even like guns to see how dangerous this theory of governance is to a free society, and how dramatically it undermines constitutional norms.
If Harris is willing to unilaterally waive gun owners’ Fourth Amendment rights, it’s not unreasonable to ask what other rights she’d be willing to unilaterally waive, and for whom.
Can the government require all who peaceably assemble to forfeit any right against excessive bail?
Can it quarter soldiers in the homes of people who petition for redress of their grievances?
May it prohibit the free exercise of religion, but just for those who insist on their right to trial by an impartial jury?
The correct answer, of course, is a resounding “no.” That’s not how our constitutional rights work — not for gun owners, and not for anyone else.
Not even if Harris threatens otherwise.
