Supposedly, Kamala Harris no longer supports a mandatory "buyback" of so-called assault weapons, though her campaign says she's still in favor of a ban. But if you're looking for specifics on her gun control agenda, you're basically out of luck. The Harris campaign isn't delving into the details of many of her campaign priorities, and if they have their way, she'll be keeping things as vague as possible until after the election.

Democratic lawmakers call it a savvy strategy. They’d rather lay out a specific plan post-November, when a potential President-elect Harris would have to staff up her administration and determine her governing priorities.

“She doesn’t need to negotiate against herself. We’ve got the biggest possible tent right now,” said Rep. Ann McLane Kuster (D-N.H.), chair of the centrist New Democrats. “I don’t think there’s a real strong reason for her to try to weed out any points of view right now.”

This is a tacit admission that once voters start to learn the details of what a Harris administration would look like, they'll be less likely to support her candidacy. Right now, Harris's primary pitch is essentially "She's not Biden, and she's not Trump", and that's just fine with many Democrats. Why bother to get specific if its just going to hurt her in the polls? 

Still, Democrats feel little urgency for the Harris campaign to put out detailed new policy documents that could easily become further campaign ad fodder for the right, especially as Trump has struggled to hit her effectively over the last month. They’ve seen polls, in the presidential race and down ballot, shift in their favor after Harris’ rise, and believe her lack of fidelity to certain policy positions will continue to be an asset to elections across the country.

“They have very little knowledge about who she is, what her job has actually been,” said one battleground-district House Democrat, granted anonymity to speak candidly, of voters’ attitudes toward Harris. “They know Trump. They know what his policies are. They don’t know Kamala. And so Kamala has a ton of room right now to define herself.”

But she's not trying to define herself, except in the fuzziest terms possible. That's her campaign strategy, and so far most of the press has been happy to go along with it. On the rare occasions where Harris has deigned to take a couple of questions from the press (generally on an airport tarmac and only for a few minutes), campaign reporters have been largely more interested in asking nothingburger questions about the status of the race instead of drilling down on her walk backs of previously held positions or pressing her to get specific about her future plans. 

I've not heard a single member of the press ask Harris, for instance, why she supposedly no longer thinks its a "good idea" to demand lawful gun owners turn over their AR-15s and other modern sporting rifles to the government in exchange for a pittance. They haven't quizzed her on what she thinks the punishment should be if the millions of legal owners impacted by an "assault weapon" ban refuse to turn them in, or even the scope and breadth of what the "assault weapon" ban she's still demanding would look like. 

While Democrats say that gives Harris room to define herself, it also gives the Trump campaign and Republicans the opportunity to define her candidacy as one that's so extreme she refuses to level with the American people about her plans. Harris's refusal to detail her gun ban plans, in particular, is fertile ground for Trump and his allies. Harris supported D.C.'s ban on handguns and tried to ban gun shows from San Francisco's Cow Palace when she was District Attorney, defended California's gun control laws (including its failed experiment in "microstamping") as Attorney General, and demanded the compensated confiscation of the most popular rifles in the country as a failed presidential candidate in 2019. As Vice President, she blasted the Bruen decision. And her portfolio includes overseeing the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, which is rumored to be pushing the ATF to crack down on Glock handguns while supporting Chicago's lawsuit against the gun maker.

There's a good reason why Harris isn't bringing up her own anti-2A history and is talking about gun control in the most generic terms possible. It's the same reason why Trump and Republicans should be making Harris (and Walz's) own and explain their anti-gun ideology; the more specifics she offers, the less appealing she is to undecided and independent voters... especially those who care about their right to keep and bear arms.