Maybe this is one reason why Kamala Harris doesn't want to talk about the specifics of her gun control plans: she doesn't know how the current laws work. 

During an interview with the National Association of Black Journalists on Tuesday, Harris was asked "how will you address the issue of use of handguns [in crime], because a push for an 'assault weapons' ban only addresses a significant but small part of the problem?" 

Harris tried to get away with just offering her standard talking points: asserting that she's a gun owner and isn't interested in taking anyone's guns away before offering her support for an "assault weapons" ban. Though Harris claimed she doesn't want to take anyone's guns away, she also declared that semi-automatic rifles "have no place on the streets of a civil society". That begs the question of what Harris proposes to do with (and to) the 20+ million semi-automatic long guns in the United States, especially since her campaign claims she no longer supports a mandatory "buyback." 

The reporters interviewing Harris didn't press her to elaborate on her gun ban proposal, but they did press her to answer the question about handguns. 

Harris brought up "universal" background checks, but was reminded that many guns used in crime weren't purchased legally. That's when the Democratic candidate let loose this whopper. 

Harris: Which is why I also have been very adamant for years, in fact I myself protested at a gun show probably ten or fifteen years ago, about the gun show loophole and why we need to close that. Because what ends up happening is that gun shows at flea markets, gun dealers are not, under existing law in the past, required to register their sales. And so you are exactly right that a lot of homicides, for example, a good number of them, I don't have the statistic in front of my mind, are committed with illegally purchased guns. And that's why we need to address each entry point in the issue, including universal background checks, closing the gun show loophole, and what we need to do as a general matter, which is to focus not only on a reaction to crime but prevention of crime.

You can check out the exchange for yourself in the video window below. 

Despite Harris's insistence that under "existing law in the past" (whatever that means) gun dealers could go to flea markets or swap meets and sell firearms without putting buyers through a background check, the rules for federally licensed firearms dealers are the same whether they're operating out of a brick-and-mortar storefront, their personal residence, or at a gun show... regardless of where it takes place. All commercial firearm sales are supposed to go through a background check, period.

The law is different when it comes to gun owners selling a firearm from their personal collection. Occasiona sales like that aren't required to go through a background check, though the Biden/Harris administration has tried to change that through an ATF rule that dramatically expands who is "engaged in the business" of selling guns. 

Oddly, Harris didn't talk at all about the new rule, even though its expansive definition means that someone offering a single firearm for sale can be deemed to be "engaged in the business" and subject to federal prosecution, regardless of whether the sale is completed. 

A federal judge in Texas has already indicated the new rule is yet another example of executive branch overreach and issued an injunction blocking enforcement of the rule in several states and for gun owners who members of GOA, which might be why Harris didn't mention the ATF's reinterpretation of federal statute. Then again, she may very well be completely clueless about the particulars of the new rule and the litigation challenging it. 

Whatever the reason for Harris's avoidance of the new rule, she's flat out wrong about how background checks work. She's also wrong about how criminals are illegally acquiring the guns they use in crime. According to a 2016 study from the DOJ, half of federal inmates who illegally possessed a gun in the commission of a crime obtained the firearm through theft. Another 43% got their gun through the "underground market". Just 0.8% said they obtained their gun at a gun show, a number that includes those who weren't prohibited by law from purchasing or possessing a firearm at the time. 

On the one hand, the questions Harris received from the reporters at NABJ were probably the toughest she's received on the campaign trail to date. But there was also no pushback to Harris's numerous falsehoods, nor did the reporters ask Harris to explain how her statement that semi-automatic rifles "have no place on the streets of a civil society" jibes with her insistence that she's not trying to take away anyone's guns. Harris may be hoping to dodge that question until Election Day has come and gone, but the few reporters who have been granted access to the Democratic candidate are derelict in their duty if they allow her to get away without fully explaining the contours of her proposed gun ban.