'Never went to war': Walz ripped for saying he wants to ban guns he 'carried in war'

Vice President Harris' running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, said he wants to ban guns he "carried in war" though he never saw combat during his time in the Army National Guard and left the service after being informed that his unit would be deployed to Iraq.

"I spent 25 years in the Army, and I hunt. I’ve been voting for commonsense legislation that protects the Second Amendment, but we can do background checks. We can research the impacts of gun violence. We can make sure those weapons of war that I carried in war are only carried in war," Walz said in a video posted by the Harris campaign on Tuesday.

Walz joined the Army National Guard in 1981, retiring in 2005 from the 1st Battalion, 125th Field Artillery, where he rose to the rank of command sergeant major. Across his more than two decades of service, he never saw combat, according to an interview with Minnesota Public Radio in 2018.

"I know that there are certainly folks that did far more than I did. I know that," Walz said, acknowledging that he never saw combat. "I willingly say that I got far more out of the military than they got out of me, from the GI Bill to leadership opportunities to everything else."

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Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz speaks at Dutch Creek Farms, Nov. 1, 2023, in Northfield, Minn. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

Walz retired months after a warning order was issued to his battalion that it would be deployed to Iraq, the New York Post reported Tuesday. Service member Thomas Behrends went in his place, according to the Post, sparking the veteran to slam Walz as "a traitor" and "coward" for retiring before deploying.

"When your country calls, you are supposed to run into battle, not the other way," the retired command sergeant major told the New York Post. "He ran away. It’s sad."

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Walz ran for Congress instead, winning his race and subsequently being sworn into office in 2007. Harris' running mate did train with military weapons, including specializing in heavy artillery, and was awarded ribbons for his proficiency in sharpshooting and hand grenades, Minnesota Public Radio reported.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (Stephen Maturen/AFP via Getty Images/File)

Critics on social media slammed Walz and the Harris campaign for running the snippet of Walz calling for a ban on guns he allegedly "carried in war," pointing to his previous remarks that he never saw combat; others called him out for portraying himself as a gun advocate and hunter despite supporting left-wing gun control legislation.

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While Walz served as a congressman from 2006 to 2019 representing a rural district that typically voted red, he leaned into his support of the Second Amendment and hunting, with pro-gun groups such as the NRA lauding him for his outspoken support of gun ownership. The National Rifle Association awarded Walz an A rating for his commitment to protecting gun ownership, while Guns & Ammo magazine listed him in 2016 as one of America's 20 top politicians for gun owners.

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Walz has since changed his tune to champion gun control measures and lost his high marks among the Second Amendment community. The NRA slammed Walz as a "political chameleon" in a statement provided to Fox News Digital on Tuesday after Harris officially announced him as her running mate. 

Audience members are shown ahead of Vice President Harris' rally with her newly chosen vice presidential running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, in Philadelphia on Aug. 6, 2024. (REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque)

"Tim Walz is a political chameleon – changing his positions to further his own personal agenda. In Congress, Walz purported to be a friend of gun owners to receive their support in his rural Minnesota district. Once he had his eyes set on other offices, he sold out law-abiding Minnesotans and promoted a radical gun control agenda that emboldened criminals and left everyday citizens defenseless. Kamala Harris and Tim Walz cannot be trusted to defend freedom and our Constitutional rights," Randy Kozuch, chair of the NRA Political Victory Fund, said in a statement.

Walz announced in 2017, after the Las Vegas mass shooting, that he was donating the roughly $18,000 he received from the NRA to charity. In the following year, he joined fellow Democrats in calling for gun control measures, including banning so-called assault weapons.

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Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz greets Vice President Harris as she arrives at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport in Saint Paul, Minnesota, on March 14, 2024. (Stephen Maturen/AFP via Getty Images)

Walz wrote in an op-ed in 2018 that his views on guns are "evolving in some ways" but that he's "always been a reformer."

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"To finally come together to end gun violence, we'll need a new approach. We'll need to build a coalition we haven't seen before: rural, urban, suburban and exurban folks; gun owners and gun-violence survivors; hunters and advocates and police officers and the young people who are stepping up right now. We'll need a coalition of folks of good faith who haven't seen eye to eye but respect the different ways of life in every corner of our state," he wrote in an op-ed published by the Star Tribune in 2018. 

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