A staffer for Kamala Harris confirmed the Vice President doesn’t own a gun during an interview on CNN.
This isn’t true. The spokesperson, Adrienne Elrod, actually confirmed the Democratic presidential candidate does own a gun, but auto generated captions incorrectly subtitled the clip.
A video is being shared online with false claims that it shows a Kamala Harris staffer confirming that the Vice President lied about owning a gun in a CNN interview.
Adrienne Elrod, senior spokesperson for the Harris-Walz campaign was being interviewed by Jim Acosta on 20 September when she was asked about the Democratic presidential candidate’s gun ownership.
In a number of posts shared on X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook, social media users claim Ms Elrod said Ms Harris “does not own a firearm”, and some accuse Ms Harris of having “lied”. Some share a clip of the interview with subtitles, while some examples are sped up.
But the spokesperson actually confirmed Ms Harris does own a firearm in the clip.
In some versions, subtitles have been added to the video which say: “She has made it very clear that she sanctually supports the Second Amendment and she was she supports strong gun responsible gun ownership um and she doesn’t own a firearm [sic].”
However, the subtitles are not an accurate transcription of what was said during the interview. Some versions appear to have been sped up, making the audio less clear.
While Ms Elrod appears to have a verbal stumble earlier during the sentence, it is clear from the unedited audio that Ms Harris says “does own a firearm” rather than “doesn’t”. According to the official CNN transcript she said: “Yes, well look she has made it very clear that she staunchly supports the second amendment. She supports strong responsible gun ownership and she does own a firearm.”
Ian Sams, a senior spokesman for the Harris-Walz campaign, also shared a clip of the exchange at the correct speed on X with the caption: “The definition of disinformation: video intentionally manipulated (artificially sped up to make the audio unclear) to mislead the viewer.
“Here’s the actual clip, in which @adrienneelrod says plainly: ‘She supports strong, responsible gun ownership, and she does own a firearm’”.
Ms Harris recently confirmed she owned a firearm during a debate with Republican candidate Donald Trump on 10 September, where she said: “And then this business about taking everyone's guns away. Tim Walz and I are both gun owners. We're not taking anybody's guns away.”
She also said during a live streamed event in Detroit, Michigan, with Oprah Winfrey on 20 September: “I’m a gun owner too. If somebody breaks into my house, they’re getting shot.”
Full Fact has seen numerous examples of misinformation circulating about both presidential candidates ahead of the US election in November, including false claims that Ms Harris was a communist party member and made-up comments attributed to Donald Trump on Islam and Ukraine.
Miscaptioned or edited videos are a common form of misinformation that we see circulating online. Our guide on how to verify videos can help you confirm what you are seeing social media shows what it claims to.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because the staffer actually said Ms Harris does own a firearm during the interview, but the subtitle was incorrect.
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