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Vice President Kamala Harris introduced Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz will be part of her on the 2024 Democratic ticket for the White Home, regardless of the pair beforehand having wildly differing views on the Second Modification and gun management.
“I’m proud to announce that I’ve requested @Tim_Walz to be my working mate. As a governor, a coach, a trainer, and a veteran, he is delivered for working households like his. It is nice to have him on the workforce. Now let’s get to work,” Harris posted to X on Tuesday morning.
Walz is within the midst of his second time period as Minnesota governor, and beforehand served as a U.S. congressman within the state from 2007-2019, the place he represented a largely rural inhabitants. Again when he served as a congressman in a district that sometimes voted purple, Walz was seen as a champion of gun rights and looking.
The Nationwide Rifle Affiliation awarded Walz an A ranking for his dedication to defending gun possession and rejecting gun management legal guidelines pushed by left-wing members of the Democratic Occasion.
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Gov. Tim Walz speaks at an occasion in Northfield, Minnesota, on Nov. 1, 2023. (Christopher Mark Juhn/Anadolu by way of Getty Pictures)
“Tim Walz is a gun proprietor. He grew up looking and spent 24 years within the Military Nationwide Guard. Now in Congress, Tim stood up time and time once more for the constitutional rights of law-abiding gun house owners and sportsmen. It’s why the NRA gave Tim an ‘A’ ranking,” a 2010 political advert declared.
Walz’s celebration of the Second Modification included incomes him a spot on Weapons & Ammo journal’s 2016 record of 20 prime politicians for gun house owners.
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“A Democrat, Rep. Walz proves that gun rights should not at all times partisan points. Walz Co-sponsored ATF reform laws again in 2008 and was a lead sponsor within the SHARE Act,” Walz’s function on the record reads. “Whereas most congressional Democrats have jumped on the gun management prepare with each ft, Tim Walz and some others have caught to their weapons.”
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks to the media after touring a Deliberate Parenthood facility in St. Paul, Minnesota, with Gov. Tim Walz and Deliberate Parenthood North Central States chief medical officer Sarah Traxler, March 14, 2024. (Glen Stubbe/Star Tribune by way of Getty Pictures)
Walz has since modified his tune to champion gun management measures, and misplaced his excessive marks among the many Second Modification neighborhood. The NRA slammed Walz as a “political chameleon” in an announcement offered to Fox Information Digital on Tuesday after Harris formally introduced him as her working mate.
“Tim Walz is a political chameleon – altering his positions to additional his personal private agenda. In Congress, Walz presupposed to be a pal of gun house owners to obtain their help in his rural Minnesota district. As soon as he had his eyes set on different places of work, he offered out law-abiding Minnesotans and promoted a radical gun management agenda that emboldened criminals and left on a regular basis residents defenseless. Kamala Harris and Tim Walz can’t be trusted to defend freedom and our Constitutional rights,” Randy Kozuch, chairman of the NRA Political Victory Fund (NRA-PVF), stated in an announcement.
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Walz’s earlier gun stances stand in stark distinction to Harris’ celebration in recent times that the Biden administration would tackle the NRA and win, citing Biden’s work as a senator when he voted to ban semi-automatic firearms in 1994 as a part of a serious crime invoice.
“@JoeBiden has taken on the @NRA and gained. He can do it once more,” Harris tweeted final yr, accompanied by a marketing campaign advert celebrating Biden’s dedication to “ban assault weapons.”
Biden, whereas serving as a Delaware senator, voted to ban semi-automatic firearms in 1994 as a part of a serious crime invoice, whereas the Democrat-majority Home on the time handed the ban as a standalone invoice. The invoice finally was integrated into the sweeping anti-crime bundle and required exceptions to be able to go, together with a sundown provision.
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Sen. Kamala Harris speaks at an occasion in Las Vegas on April 27, 2019. (Ethan Miller/Getty Pictures)
The invoice was handed by Congress and signed into regulation by President Invoice Clinton in September of that yr. It enacted a 10-year ban on the manufacture, switch or possession of “semiautomatic assault weapons” and “giant capability ammunition feeding gadgets.”
The regulation expired in 2004, when George W. Bush was president and Republicans managed each chambers of Congress.
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Quick-forward to 2009, when Barack Obama was president, Walz was certainly one of 65 Democrats within the Home who signed a letter to Legal professional Basic Eric Holder opposing any bans just like the one from 1994, the Star Tribune beforehand reported. Holder notably was chosen by Harris this yr to move up the vetting means of the pool of potential veeps earlier than Walz was finally chosen.
Gov. Tim Walz speaks throughout a press convention relating to gun laws at Metropolis Corridor on Aug. 1, 2024 in Bloomington, Minnesota. (Stephen Maturen/Getty Pictures)
In 2017 and 2018, the then-congressman wildly modified his tune on gun management, becoming a member of fellow Democrats of their calls to tighten legal guidelines on gun possession. Walz introduced in 2017, following the tragic Las Vegas capturing, that he was donating the roughly $18,000 he obtained from the NRA to charity.
Days after the tragic faculty capturing at Stoneman Douglas Excessive College in 2018, Walz joined fellow Democrats in calling for gun management measures. Final yr, the governor additionally signed into regulation common background checks and a purple flag order, which was slammed by Second Modification teams.
Walz wrote in an op-ed in 2018 that his views on weapons are “evolving in some methods,” however that he is “at all times been a reformer.”
“To lastly come collectively to finish gun violence, we’ll want a brand new method. We’ll have to construct a coalition we’ve not seen earlier than: rural, city, suburban and exurban people; gun house owners and gun-violence survivors; hunters and advocates and law enforcement officials and the younger people who find themselves stepping up proper now. We’ll want a coalition of oldsters of excellent religion who have not seen eye to eye however respect the alternative ways of life in each nook of our state,” he wrote in an op-ed printed by the Star Tribune in 2018.
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“That is how we get issues achieved in Minnesota: We come collectively. As a hunter, sportsman and veteran with a lifelong respect for weapons, as a resident of larger Minnesota, a trainer, and a dad who simply desires his youngsters to return residence protected, I can and can convey collectively that coalition to finish gun violence, protect our methods of life and be certain that everybody will get residence to their households protected.”
Get the most recent updates from the 2024 marketing campaign path, unique interviews and extra at our Fox Information Digital election hub.
Tim Walz slammed as ‘political chameleon’ for ditching earlier pro-2nd Modification stand
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