In the days following Kamala Harris securing the delegates needed to become the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, anonymous aides began walking back many of the more progressive positions she took during the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries.

Whereas in 2019, Harris told MSNBC, “We have to have a buyback program, and I support a mandatory gun buyback program,” an unnamed “campaign official” told reporters in 2024 that Harris still supports an “assault weapons” ban but “not a requirement to sell them to the federal government.”