US Vice President Kamala Harris admits to firing Glock pistol

Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris revealed in an interview broadcast this morning that she owns a Glock semi-automatic pistol — and said that “of course” she’d fired it on a shooting range.

Speculation has swirled about the US Vice President’s weapon of choice ever since she told television star Oprah Winfrey recently that she was a gun owner and that she would shoot anyone who broke into her house.

“I have a Glock, and I’ve had it for quite some time,” Harris said in an interview on the primetime CBS show 60 Minutes when asked what kind of firearm she packed.

“My background is in law enforcement. And -- so there you go,” added the former prosecutor and California attorney general.

Interviewer Bill Whitaker then asked if Harris had ever fired the Glock. Harris replied with a laugh: “Of course I have. At a shooting range. Yes, of course I have.

Austrian manufacturer Glock makes one of America’s best-selling handguns. Widely used by police, Glocks have also attained cult status from their appearance in films and hip-hop culture.

Until recently Harris had rarely mentioned her status as a firearms owner, in line with her party’s emphasis on curtailing access to guns in a country regularly rocked by armed crime and mass shootings.

But in a tight election with Republican Donald Trump, the 59-year-old Democrat has begun to play up her gun-owning credentials.

Trump has repeatedly claimed that Harris wants to confiscate Americans’ guns in violation of the US Constitution’s Second Amendment — including in their only televised debate last month.

Harris fiercely rejected that charge, noting that she and her running mate, Tim Walz, are both gun owners.

“I’m a gun owner,” she then told Winfrey in September. “If someone breaks into my house, they’re getting shot,” she added with a chuckle.

Her Glock revelation in was the most eye-catching in an interview that saw Harris carefully navigate tough questioning on hot-button topics such as immigration and the economy.

Mr Trump backed out of a 60 Minutes encounter last week, bucking what the program said was a half-century tradition of both US presidential candidates sitting down with the show before an election.

Earlier, Trump claimed there were “a lot of bad genes” in the US while discussing murders allegedly committed by immigrants living illegally there.

“How about allowing people to come to an open border, 13,000 of which were murderers,” Trump said on Monday in an interview with conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt

“Many of them murdered far more than one person, and they’re now happily living in the United States. You know, now a murderer, I believe this, it’s in their genes. And we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now.”

Trump appeared to be referring to a letter from Immigration and Customs Enforcement to Republican Representative Tony Gonzales, released in September which showed 13,099 people have been convicted of homicide who are on ICE’s “non-detained docket”.

That docket includes various types of immigrants who entered the country legally and illegally.

In a statement, the Trump campaign defended his comments, saying he was speaking only about murderers, not immigrants.

“President Trump was clearly referring to murderers, not migrants,” said Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt.

“It’s pretty disgusting the media is always so quick to defend murderers, rapists, and illegal criminals if it means writing a bad headline about President Trump.”

The former president has frequently attacked migrants on the campaign trail, particularly those who have been implicated in crimes. At times, he has used dehumanising language, and he has increasingly turned to extremely graphic depictions of the crimes.

While there is little data about the immigration status of criminals, academic researchers say immigrants in the country illegally do not commit crimes more often than US-born or naturalised Americans.

The White House condemned Trump’s remarks.

“That type of language is hateful, it’s disgusting, it’s inappropriate and it has no place in our country,” White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said.