The Washington Post compiled a summary of presidential candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris' positions on important crime policies. Trump's can be seen here and Harris' here. Among Trump's entries: He supports a Florida ballot measure legalizing recreational marijuana use, and said he would "end needless arrests and incarcerations” for people who use “small amounts of marijuana for personal use.” In 2019, Trump supported red-flag laws after mass shootings in Dayton and El Paso but abandoned that stance under pressure from the National Rifle Association. After the Parkland, Fla., mass killing in 2018, Trump said, "We have to keep the guns out of the hands of those that pose the threat. And this really includes background checks.” Later that year, the White House distanced itself from many of the background check proposals amid backlash from the NRA. Trump has said he owned “a couple of different guns” under a concealed-carry permit in New York. He signed the First Step Act to reform some federal prison practices but later expressed doubts about some of its provisions.
Harris supports decriminalizing marijuana use and introduced a Senate bill to decriminalize the drug under federal law. She believes nobody should go to jail for smoking marijuana and has urged federal agencies to act quickly on the Biden-Harris administration’s directive to reassess marijuana’s classification on the federal drug schedule. She touted the administration’s pardoning of people with federal marijuana convictions and its call for states to pardon such convictions. Harris’s stance represents a shift in her views from her time as a prosecutor. On guns, Harris has called on every state to enact a red-flag law and announced the Biden-Harris administration’s creation of a national resource center to help states implement them. Harris announced new federal rules in April that require background checks to be done by sellers at gun shows and online, to tighten a loophole through which buyers and sellers in certain venues have escaped background checks. Harris has long supported universal background checks and called on Congress to pass broader gun-control legislation. Harris confirmed in the September debate with Trump that she owns a gun and later said it was a Glock. An aide said Harris kept the handgun safely locked up. In a September appearance on a live stream hosted by Oprah Winfrey, Harris said: "If somebody breaks in my house, they're getting shot."
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