Vice President Kamala Harris announced that she would join Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as the 2024 Democratic presidential candidate, despite the two previously having sharp differences on the Second Amendment and gun control.
“I’m proud to have asked @Tim_Walz to be my running mate. As a governor, coach, teacher and veteran, he’s dedicated himself to working families like my own, and I’m thrilled to have him on the team. Now, let’s get to work,” Harris posted to X on Tuesday morning.
Walz is in his second term as Minnesota’s governor and previously represented a largely rural area of the state in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2007 to 2019. During his time in the House, where he represented a district that tends to vote Republican, Walz was seen as a champion of gun rights and hunting.
The National Rifle Association gave Walz an A for his efforts to protect gun rights and reject gun control laws pushed by left-leaning Democrats.
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Governor Tim Walz speaks at an event in Northfield, Minnesota on November 1, 2023. (Christopher Mark June/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“Tim Waltz is a gun owner. He grew up hunting and spent 24 years in the Army National Guard. Now a member of Congress, Tim has stood up time and time again for the constitutional rights of law-abiding gun owners and sportsmen. That’s why the NRA gave Tim an ‘A’ rating,” a 2010 political ad proclaimed.
Walz has praised the Second Amendment and was named to Guns & Ammo magazine’s 2016 list of “Top 20 Politicians for Gun Owners.”
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“Congressman Waltz, a Democrat, proves that gun rights are not necessarily a partisan issue. He co-sponsored the ATF reform bill in 2008 and was the lead sponsor of the SHARE Act,” the list reads in Waltz’s section. “While most Democrats in Congress are committed to gun control, Rep. Tim Walz and several others are sticking to their guns.”
Vice President Kamala Harris spoke to media after touring a Planned Parenthood facility in St. Paul, Minnesota, on March 14, 2024, with Governor Tim Walz and Planned Parenthood North Central States Chief Medical Officer Sarah Traxler. (Glenn Stubb/Star Tribune via Getty Images)
Waltz has since shifted to a stance in favor of gun control, eroding his strong support among the Second Amendment community. In a statement provided to Fox News Digital on Tuesday after Harris formally announced Waltz as her running mate, the NRA slammed him as a “political chameleon.”
“Tim Walz is a political chameleon, shifting positions to suit his own personal aims. In Congress, Walz claimed to be a friend to gun owners in order to win their support in rural Minnesota districts. In other offices, he promoted a radical gun control agenda that betrayed law-abiding Minnesotans, emboldened criminals and left ordinary citizens defenseless. Kamala Harris and Tim Walz cannot be trusted to protect our freedoms and constitutional rights,” NRA Political Victory Fund President Randy Kozuk said in a statement.
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Walz’s past stance on gun control stands in stark contrast to Harris’ praise in recent years for Biden’s administration’s ability to take on the NRA and win, citing his record as a senator when he voted in favor of a ban on semi-automatic rifles as part of a major crime bill in 1994.
“Joe Biden took on the NRA and won. He can do it again,” Harris tweeted last year alongside a campaign ad praising Biden’s commitment to “ban assault weapons.”
Biden voted for a ban on semiautomatic rifles as part of a major crime bill in 1994 when he was a senator from Delaware, but the then Democratic-controlled House passed the ban as a standalone bill that was eventually folded into a comprehensive crime bill that required exceptions such as a statute of limitations to pass.
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Senator Kamala Harris speaks at an event in Las Vegas on April 27, 2019. (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
The bill was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton in September of that year, and it bans the manufacture, transfer, and possession of “semi-automatic assault weapons” and “large-capacity ammunition feeding devices” for 10 years.
The law expired in 2004, when President George W. Bush was in office and Republicans controlled both houses of Congress.
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Fast forward to 2009, during Barack Obama’s presidency, and Walz was one of 65 House Democrats who signed a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder opposing a ban similar to that in 1994, the Star Tribune previously reported. Notably, Holder was selected by Harris to lead the vice presidential selection process this year before Walz was ultimately selected.
Governor Tim Walz speaks during a press conference on gun control bills at City Hall in Bloomington, Minnesota on August 1, 2024. (Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
In 2017 and 2018, then-Congressman Walz significantly shifted his stance on gun control, joining other Democrats in calling for stronger gun ownership laws. In 2017, after the tragic Las Vegas shooting, Walz announced he would donate the approximately $18,000 he received from the NRA to charity.
Governor Walz joined Democratic lawmakers in calling for gun control measures days after the tragic mass shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018. Last year, the Governor signed universal background checks and red flag mandates into law, which were condemned by Second Amendment groups.
In a 2018 op-ed, Walz wrote that his views on guns have “evolved in some ways” but that he “has always been a reformer.”
“To finally come together to end gun violence, we need a new approach. We need to build coalitions like we’ve never seen before — rural, urban, suburban and exurban; gun owners and victims of gun violence; hunters and advocates, police officers and the young people who are rising up right now. We need a coalition of people of good will who may not agree with us, but who respect the different ways of life in every corner of our state,” he wrote in a 2018 op-ed in the Star Tribune.
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“In Minnesota, we get things done together. As a hunter, sportsman and military veteran with a lifelong love of guns, as a Minnesota resident, teacher and father who wants nothing more than for his children to come home safe, I can and will come together to end gun violence, protect our way of life and ensure everyone can return home safely to their families.”
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