Vice President Kamala Harris has a long history of advocating for gun control. During the 2020 primary, she made President Joe Biden's gun control advocacy look tame by comparison.

While she's tried to walk some of that back a bit now that she's effectively the nominee and needs support outside of the Democratic Party if she's got a hope of winning, she's not exactly screaming her support for the Second Amendment, either.

But a story was brought to my attention, one that didn't show up in my usual search of the news for gun-related stories, that might explain a few things about her and her anti-gun stance.

She might be trying to deflect from her own failures.

Vice President Kamala Harris championed sanctuary cities when she served as district attorney in San Francisco, with her office saying at the time that “we are a sanctuary city, a city of refuge, and we always will be.”

Now with her as the Democrats’ leading presidential candidate and presumptive nominee, Republicans are pointing back to her liberal policies that were soft on illegal migrants.

Harris was elected as San Francisco’s DA in 2004, running on a campaign vowing to never impose the death penalty and supporting the city’s decades-old sanctuary city policy while in office.

Harris argued at the time that the policy allowed illegal migrants to come forward about crimes without fear of retribution for their immigration status.

...

Edwin Ramos, an illegal migrant from El Salvador, committed a triple murder in 2008 in San Francisco when Harris was district attorney.

Ramos’ gruesome killings of three members of the Bologna family — Tony Bologna, 48, and his sons Michael, 20, and Matthew, 16 — rocked national headlines and led then-Mayor Gavin Newsom to change the city’s policies on juvenile crimes.

Before the triple shooting, Ramos had been arrested several times as a juvenile for being involved in a gang-related assault on a bus passenger and an attempted robbery of a pregnant woman, per the San Francisco Chronicle.

In both cases, he was not referred to federal authorities because it was a city policy not to question the immigration status of juveniles.

Ramos used what was reported as an AK-47 for the killing.

He had a criminal record and wasn't deported. This happened under Harris's watch, which would make it completely legitimate to drop this at her feet. Yet if she blames guns, especially so-called assault weapons, then it isn't really. It's the gun's fault. You can't blame her screw-ups on immigration because that's not what actually was the problem in the first place.

We've seen politicians repeatedly try to foist blame for their own failures on other things. Former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot routinely blamed Indiana's gun laws, or lack thereof, for her city's problems. Mexico has been trying to blame us for their growing failed state status. The idea that Harris is trying to deflect her immigration failings on guns is far from the most shocking thing I've ever heard of.

Never mind that an illegal immigrant and known gang member with multiple brushes with the law can't lawfully buy a firearm in the first place. Never mind that California has had universal background checks since 1991, which we've been assured is intended to keep guns out of unlawful hands.

None of that worked, but the problem is insufficient gun control rather than doing like we've long advocated for, which is to blame the tool using it, not the tool.

Harris failed when it comes to immigration and while that might not explain all of her animosity toward guns, it probably explains some of it.