Harris Co-Chair: Her Saying She’d Shoot Intruder and Stand Your Ground Is Often Cover for Racism Are Consistent

On Friday’s broadcast of CNN’s “OutFront,” Harris-Walz Co-Chair Sen. Laphonza Butler (D-CA) maintained that there is no contradiction between 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris’ remark that she’d shoot an intruder — which campaign Adviser Keisha Lance Bottoms said was a joke — and her previous criticism of stand your ground laws and Harris “absolutely respects the fact that people have the right to defend their homes,” and her criticism of stand your ground laws as a frequent cover for racism was her discussing “what has been happening in our country to black men and men of color and women of color all across the different states.”

Host Erin Burnett played video of Harris saying she’d shoot an intruder, then saying she probably shouldn’t have said that and her staff will deal with it. Burnett then played video of Harris in 2020 saying, “[S]tand your ground laws and these states that have these citizen arrest laws have often, often and frequently, been used as an excuse, if not a cover, for people who are motivated by racism and racial profiling. And so, we have seen that.”

Burnett then asked, “Do you see a contradiction there?”

Butler responded, “I don’t see a contradiction. The Vice President was responding to a question in the context of the tragic shooting of Trayvon Martin and Eric Gardner and those are not circumstances where those young people were invading someone else’s private property. The Vice President was very clearly talking about what was happening in our country, what has been happening in our country to black men and men of color and women of color all across the different states. And, at that time, that was the question that she’s responding to. She absolutely respects the fact that people have the right to defend their homes, and they’re not the same things, and it’s cute that people want to try to make those comparisons, but they don’t want to talk about the actual issues that were behind the Vice President’s comments and the racism that has been shown, originally, in these kinds of situations.”

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