Many of us are old enough to remember Mike Dukakis’s disastrous outing in a tank during the 1988 campaign, which is still to this day generally regarded as the big turning point that led to Dukakis losing the election. He looked ridiculous, it was patently a campaign stunt, and he paid the price for it.
Over at RealClearPolitics, scribe Shane Harris has made the interesting speculation that Kamala Harris’ “Glock moment” may well be the same kind of misstep. But there’s one big difference.
Vice President Kamala Harris’ comments about owning a “Glock” are proving to be, more than just a short-lived embarrassment, a microcosm of the problem plaguing her candidacy. Like other failed campaigns before, Harris’ camp seems to believe the public can be hoodwinked with prepared lines and ads and images that are at odds with the candidate’s record and identity.
“Tim Walz and I are both gun owners,” Harris said on stage in Philadelphia last month during her debate with Donald Trump. “We’re not taking anybody’s guns away.”
It was one of the more discordant remarks Harris has made throughout her short-lived campaign, and inadvertently highlighted her record of hostility toward gun owners and the Second Amendment. Harris has supported bans of popular firearms which she calls “assault weapons,” praised Australia’s gun grabs, and signed on to a Supreme Court brief which argued that the Second Amendment protects only a “collective” or “militia-related” right to bear arms – and not an individual right.
Harris has later, as several pieces here at RedState have documented, claimed to own a Glock:
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Color me skeptical. Frankly, I’m not buying it; I don’t think Kamala Harris owns a Glock or any other kind of firearm. Nobody has faced her down over it; a few questions about this mythical Glock would have revealed a lot. I’m reminded of a story a few years back where a journalist, Christine Lavin of the San Francisco Chronicle, wrote an article about — you guessed it — her Glock. She even described a confrontation with unknown parties and her reaction:
I opened my glove compartment, took out my Glock 17, and flipped off the safety. It was the first time it had ever come out of the glove compartment for any reason other than target practice. I rolled down the driver’s window and held the gun in front of my chest in both hands, as I’d been taught.
Many of you will have already caught the flaw in the narrative here; when I read this story, my eyes opened wide, and I remember thinking “What furshlugginer safety?” For readers who may not know it, the Glock 17 has no manual safety to “flip off.” Christine Lavin, clearly, has indulged in some dissembling here. In other words: She lied.
And I suspect Kamala Harris has as well.
Is Harris maybe facing her own “Dukakis in the tank” moment? Following her debate with Donald Trump, she insisted on doubling and tripling down on her gun comment, displaying a complete inability to read the room.
She didn’t just double down on the gun comment; she doubled down, I’m betting, on the dissembling. She doesn’t own a Glock. She never owned a Glock. Oh, I suppose Tim “Great Walz of China” probably owns a shotgun or two; he has been known to go small-game hunting, so I don’t find it unlikely.
But Kamala Harris? I’ll believe she owns a Glock when she invites some journalist in to verify it. Show us where it’s stored. Tell us which range she and the Second Gentleman go to practice. Until then, this is even worse than a Dukakis moment; it’s a flat-out falsehood, a campaign talking point that is backfiring spectacularly.
