Kamala Harris once said police could pay surprise visits to legal gun owners’ homes for safe storage checks
As San Francisco’s district attorney, Kamala Harris told legal gun owners in her community that authorities could “walk into” their homes to inspect whether they were storing their firearms properly under a new law she helped draft.
“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,” Harris told a group of reporters in May 2007.
The remarks came during a press conference introducing legislation that Harris helped draft, which sought to impose penalties for gun owners who fail to store their firearms properly at home.
The bill, which at the time had just been introduced to the city’s board of supervisors, was ultimately signed into law a few months later by then-San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. It was bundled with other gun control provisions, including a new requirement for legal gun distributors to submit an inventory to the chief of police every six months, and a ban on possessing guns – even legally – in public housing.
“San Francisco