Vice President Kamala Harris has revealed that Minnesota Governor Tim Walz will be her running mate on the 2024 Democratic ticket for the presidency, despite their previous significant disagreements regarding the Second Amendment and gun control policies.
“I am excited to share that I’ve invited @Tim_Walz to be my running mate. As a governor, coach, teacher, and veteran, he has fought for working families like his own. We are thrilled to have him onboard. Now let’s get started,” Harris tweeted on Tuesday morning.
Walz, who is currently serving his second term as governor of Minnesota, was previously a U.S. congressman from 2007 to 2019, representing a predominantly rural area. During his time in Congress, Walz was viewed as a strong advocate for gun rights and hunting, even in a district that often leaned Republican.
For his dedication to upholding gun ownership rights and opposing gun control measures advocated by more progressive Democrats, the National Rifle Association awarded Walz an A rating.
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Gov. Tim Walz speaks at an event in Northfield, Minnesota, on Nov. 1, 2023. (Christopher Mark Juhn/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“Tim Walz is a gun owner. He grew up immersed in hunting and has served for 24 years in the Army National Guard. While in Congress, Tim consistently stood up for the constitutional rights of law-abiding gun owners and sportsmen. This is why the NRA awarded Tim an ‘A’ rating,” stated a 2010 political advertisement.
His support for the Second Amendment earned him a position on Guns & Ammo magazine’s 2016 list of top politicians for gun owners.
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“As a Democrat, Rep. Walz demonstrates that gun rights can transcend party lines. He co-sponsored ATF reform legislation back in 2008 and was a principal sponsor of the SHARE Act,” notes Walz’s feature on the list. “While the majority of Congressional Democrats have embraced a strict gun control stance, Tim Walz is among the few who has remained steadfast in defending gun rights.”
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks to the media after touring a Planned Parenthood facility in St. Paul, Minnesota, with Gov. Tim Walz and Planned Parenthood North Central States chief medical officer Sarah Traxler, March 14, 2024. (Glen Stubbe/Star Tribune via Getty Images)
However, Walz has recently pivoted to support gun control initiatives, resulting in diminished support from the Second Amendment advocating community. Following Harris’s announcement of him as her running mate, the NRA released a statement labeling Walz as a “political chameleon.”
“Tim Walz is a political chameleon – shifting his positions to fulfill his self-serving agenda. In Congress, he pretended to be an ally of gun owners to gain their support in his rural Minnesota district. Once he targeted higher offices, he abandoned law-abiding Minnesotans and promoted an extreme gun control agenda that emboldened criminals and left citizens vulnerable. Kamala Harris and Tim Walz cannot be relied upon to uphold freedom and our Constitutional rights,” declared Randy Kozuch, chairman of the NRA Political Victory Fund (NRA-PVF), in a statement.
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Walz’s earlier positions on gun rights sharply contrast with Harris’s recent declarations celebrating the Biden administration’s efforts to challenge the NRA, notably highlighting Biden’s 1994 vote to ban semi-automatic firearms as part of a comprehensive crime bill.
“@JoeBiden has taken on the @NRA and won. He can do it again,” Harris tweeted last year, along with a campaign ad emphasizing Biden’s commitment to banning assault weapons.
While serving as a senator from Delaware, Biden voted to prohibit semi-automatic firearms in 1994, which was subsequently passed by a Democrat-controlled House as a standalone bill and incorporated into a broader anti-crime package, which included a sunset provision to ensure its expiration.
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Sen. Kamala Harris speaks at an event in Las Vegas on April 27, 2019. (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
The ban was enacted in 1994 under President Bill Clinton and imposed a 10-year prohibition on the manufacturing, transfer, or possession of “semiautomatic assault weapons” and “large-capacity ammunition feeding devices.”
This law lapsed in 2004, during George W. Bush’s presidency, when Republicans held a majority in Congress.
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Skipping ahead to 2009, under President Barack Obama, Walz was among 65 House Democrats who signed a letter to then-Attorney General Eric Holder expressing opposition to any reinstatement of bans similar to those from 1994, as previously reported by the Star Tribune. Notably, Holder was chosen by Harris this year to lead the vetting process for potential vice-presidential candidates before Walz was selected.
Gov. Tim Walz speaks during a press conference regarding gun legislation at City Hall on Aug. 1, 2024 in Bloomington, Minnesota. (Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
In 2017 and 2018, following calls for stricter gun laws after the tragic Las Vegas shooting, Walz announced he would donate the $18,000 he had received from the NRA to charity.
After the devastating school shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018, he joined other Democrats advocating for gun control measures. Recently, as governor, he enacted universal background checks and a red flag order, which received backlash from Second Amendment advocates.
In an op-ed published in 2018, Walz noted that his views on gun control were “evolving in some ways,” insisting that he has “always been a reformer.”
“To unite and tackle gun violence, a new approach will be essential. We must cultivate an unprecedented coalition of rural, urban, suburban, and exurban residents; gun owners and survivors of gun violence; hunters and advocates; law enforcement and the youth advocating for change. We need individuals of goodwill who respect the diverse lifestyles across our state,” he wrote.
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“That’s how we achieve success in Minnesota: by coming together. As a hunter, sportsman, and veteran with profound respect for firearms, and as a parent simply wishing for his children to return home safely, I am determined to build that coalition to combat gun violence, uphold our way of life, and guarantee that all individuals return safely to their families.”
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