Sen.Kamala Harris: If Congress doesn't act to pass reasonable gun safety laws, I will.

[DesertRat]

Link to tweet

@KamalaHarris
We shouldn't have to live in fear of mass shootings. Congress must have the courage to pass reasonable gun safety laws. If they won't act, I will.

[TexasProgresive]

1. She will what?

As president she can not make laws. She needs to clear this up.

[DesertRat]

2. She has said this many times on the campaign trail. Executive action.

Link to tweet

@KamalaHarris
As president, I will give Congress 100 days to get their act together and pass reasonable gun safety laws. If they don’t, I will take executive action. Thoughts and prayers are not enough. We need action.

[ancianita]

3. How is executive action legal, given 2A.

[highplainsdem]

4. Her campaign is admitting this would face legal challenges.

[ancianita]

5. MAJOR legal challenges. She doesn't want to appear to ignore constitutional law.

[elleng]

6. and she wouldn't; as an attorney,

she understands the consequences and likely most of the hurdles.

[ancianita]

8. So, then, why would she say this? Campaign rhetoric? One has to be careful what they say.

[highplainsdem]

10. My guess: campaign rhetoric + the frustration all of us feel.

[ancianita]

13. Doesn't make it right, especially if it's not legal. We have to stay focused about The Law.

She's acting too prosecutorial in her language. Which can come from having past prosecutorial latitude.

But she's got to remember the new national level of the legal field she's in.

She really has no excuse, except that she's running for president.

This outburst is not cool.

[elleng]

11. because she intends to make an attempt to accomplish it,

and it's at least possible.

[ancianita]

14. But to say that she'd do it as an executive? No. I can't buy that.

[CTyankee]

35. I would agree EXCEPT that she is an AG and so aware of the difficulty she would face.

I think she should explain what she meant in greater detail. At least she is willing to try and doesn't throw up her hands and say "Sorry, I got nothin'."

Geez, this isn't rocket science. Common sense, determination and willingness to go for a longterm goal is admirable.

[Blue_true]

22. Trump IS ignoring the Constitution and the Supreme Court has backed his several times,

and when it could not, it gave a halfassed ruling that winked at him.

Why should our President abide by process that the Courts are letting Trump run roughshod over? Either the Courts (I particular the Supreme Court) step up and rein Trump in, or our President ignore them and do what is right.

[Blue_true]

19. Trump ignored The House's primacy on spending to build his wall

and the Supreme Court backed Trump. Harris should point out that the Supreme Court ignored the First Amendment in backing Trump on spending, so it has no standing over the ban on some guns. She can back that up by having a political Justice Department that cowers the FBI and local law enforcement, just like Trump is doing.

[Hoyt]

7. Even white wing Tony Scalia said guns can be regulated/restricted.

I’m sure that action would be contested, but the result might be unexpected. This junk has gotten out of hand and threatens life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

[ancianita]

9. Clearly. And it's understandable that people would try things. But altering 2A is a process,

not a campaign promise.

[elleng]

12. Not altering 2A, but addressing standards set by Supremes happens all the time;

the job of attorneys.

[ancianita]

15. I'm not an attorney, but I'd like ot hear how attorneys do that at the federal level.

[elleng]

16. I am an attorney,

and as I said, it happens all the time; it's what we do.

Her statement is well within reason, and she surely knows the chances of success and failure.

[ancianita]

17. Okay, I'll take your word for it. Sounds to me like she'd rather be an AG than president.

And a damned good AG she'd be, given the mass shootings and civil rights violations she could tackle in that role.

She, and everyone else, knows the executive cannot take action against mass shootings, except to create an executive order that would be challenged in federal court. But she'd lose.

[Princetonian]

24. Nothing new here. "Presidents Bush and Clinton Also Used Executive Orders to Reform Gun Laws"

"In 1952, the Supreme Court ruled that executive orders could not make new law. Executive orders are therefore supposed to be about enforcing a current law or helping manage the enforcement of a current law. This is a matter of interpretation, and subject to argument on both sides. Whatever the President does, it will no doubt end up being challenged and argued in court (as it should be).

In 1989, then President George H.W. Bush issued an executive order halting the importation of some semi-automatic firearms after a mass school shooting Stockton, California. He based his executive order on the 1968 Gun Control Act and used it to ban the shipment of what could be considered “assault weapons” unless they were used for sporting purposes. (Question: Did the free republic cease to exist then?)

In 1998, then President Bill Clinton also issued an executive order to ban the importation of more than 50 semiautomatic “assault weapons” that had been modified to get through that “sporting purposes” exemption.

In 2001, Clinton moved again via executive order, banning the importation of assault pistols."

https://www.politicususa.com/2013/01/15/presidents-bush-clinton-executive-orders-reform-gun-laws.html

[ancianita]

26. Thanks. Much appreciated. Much as I am pro-gun control, I forgot about executive order history.

[Princetonian]

27. My pleasure, ancianita.

[CTyankee]

36. My son, an ADA with the Brooklyn DA's office, would agree with you!

[Blue_true]

23. Trump is altering the First (Congressional primacy over spending).

Why should we live by structures that are being wholly ignored now and are being approved by the Supreme Court.

[Blue_true]

18. How is ignoring that the House controls spending given The First Amendment?

Of Trump can ignore the First Admendment with Executive Orders and the Supreme Court backs him, a President Harris can ban some types of guns and tell the Courts that they allowed Trump to ignore The House, so she will ignore any ruling on the issue from the Courts. What will the Courts do, arrest her?

[ancianita]

20. I'm probably missing where SCOTUS backed Trump ignoring 1A. It's an interesting point I'd not

thought of.

So where, exactly, did SCOTUS back Trump's executive order that defied 1A?

[Blue_true]

28. Taking funds budgeted for activities in the military and using them to build a wall.

The Supreme Court backed Trump. Congress originally budgeted each bucket of money that Trump took for a specific purpose, as is their duty and only their responsibility under 1A.

[ancianita]

30. How is that 1A? This is about a CiC using military funds, which seems perfectly kosher. I'm not

sure that Congress has 1A duties over CiC. 1A is about individual freedoms.

The Constitution's separation of powers don't include 1A in this case.

Congress approves a military budget. After that, Congress can't micromanage the money, so he's free to use the military's budget as he sees fit in terms of national security.

So there doesn't seem to be a constitutional parallel with a 2A workaround by executive order? Seems both illogical, unconstitutional and weird.

(No worries if you think I don't get it. I don't get a lot of things when it's been along day.)

[Blue_true]

39. The First gives Congress and only Congress power over spending,

particularly the House, which has to craft the budget. A federal budget, any budget for that matter, allocates money to specific future activities, once that happens that money is locked in to that specific activity. Trump is not spending Executive Branch discretionary funds for his wall, he is taking money that Congress had specifically allocated to specific activities and using that money for an activity which it was not budgeted by Congress for, that violated Congresses constitutional responsibility for the budget.

I must add, the Supreme Court may well rule against Trump when it reviews the lawsuit by the House. It's ruling a week ago was that the plaintiffs in the lawsuit that it reviewed had no standing in the specific area of the dispute over allocation of the money. The House does have standing in the dispute over how money previously budgeted for a specific purpose is spent, so it will be interesting to see how the Supreme Court rule once it gets Congress' lawsuit before it. The Court may have let Trump proceed last week knowing that a lower Court would likely block him after hearing The House's lawsuit, so effectively nothing happens with the money - at least I hope that is the whole Court's intent.

[ancianita]

40. Good to know. And these likely rulings would hinder KH from acting on such a sweeping promise.

I know the First Branch allocates the money; I just haven't seen how they manage oversight on its spending.

[honest.abe]

33. It would likely end up at SCOTUS.. depending on what specifically the action is...

and if it does we might be pleasantly surprised by the result.

[Princetonian]

21. It's been done before: "Here Are Obama's New Executive Actions On Gun Control" (Jan 6, 2016)

After Sandy Hook, VP Biden headed up the task force examining gun control. Congressional opposition led both Barack and and Joe to publicly say Barack would act by executive order to restrict guns.

"President Obama introduced a new group of executive actions to reduce gun violence at an emotional press conference Tuesday. The order, which has not yet been signed into legality, is designed to bypass a gridlocked Congress."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/katiesola/2016/01/06/obama-gun-control/

Any Democratic President could, would, and should do this.

[ancianita]

25. Thank you. I forgot that. You've cleared up my issue with Kamala. Sorry for my bad memory.

It's not because Obama did it. But that, as a constitutional lawyer he had some understanding of how it could serve the interests of the country over a gridlocked congress.

[Princetonian]

29. No worries!

It's wise to question the facile promises of any politician after a national tragedy

[DesertRat]

31. She's campaigned on this for months

April 22, 2019 Kamala Harris Proposes Executive Orders on Gun Control
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/22/us/politics/kamala-harris-gun-control.html

[elocs]

32. Sure, she could use an executive order to try and do it,

but the next Republican president can then un-do it. Or are we only ever going to have Democratic presidents from now on?

[honest.abe]

34. So don't do anything because Republicans might win again??

[elocs]

41. I didn't say that, you did. Do something realistic.

Regardless of a Republican president, there is still a very conservative Supreme Court.
As far as executive orders go, we can't decry and protest when Trump uses them but then cheer a Democratic president for doing the same.

[honest.abe]

42. Seems to me the most "realistic" thing we can do is exec order..

If we win the WH and dont have majority in the Senate. Do you know of anything else?

[bigtree]

37. Kamala in May calling out Trump for ignoring domestic terrorism.

Last edited Sun Aug 4, 2019, 11:32 AM - Edit history (3)

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

[Kaleva]

38. Kick

[real Cannabis calm]

43. recommended to publicize