The exchange, during a livestreamed forum with Oprah Winfrey and Vice-President Kamala Harris on Thursday, began with the kind of emotional set piece that has become a grim go-to for Democrats campaigning on gun safety.

There was a video about the terror of a school shooting. A teenage gunshot victim in the audience with bandages on her wrist and arm.

Her tearful mother speaking directly to Harris and imploring those in power to make a change.

But then, after Winfrey, a campaign surrogate, changed the subject to Harris’ own gun ownership, the vice-president reached for a different kind of message entirely.

“If someone breaks in my house,” Harris said, as her voice broke into a laugh, “they’re getting shot.”

It was a remarkable utterance from a generally guarded candidate who expressed immediate regret. As Oprah tried to Oprah — “I hear that, I hear that,” she said — Harris admitted that she “probably should not have said that”, and joked that her aides would clean up her comment.

“My staff will deal with that later,” Harris said, still laughing.

But it also underscored her party’s increasing comfort with the country’s gun culture even as it campaigns against its dangers — and how Harris is seizing on it in the slim window she has to introduce herself to a country that has never elected a woman as President.

“Here’s my point, Oprah,” Harris said. “I’m not trying to take everyone’s guns away.”

Guns and the presidency have gone hand in hand for much of American history. You can buy a replica of one of George Washington’s flintlock pistols for $156.99 at the Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum — and the Smithsonian has one of the originals. When Barack Obama was President, the White House made a point of showing that he enjoyed skeet shooting at Camp David.

But in recent years, it has generally been male Democrats from red states — not female ones from California — who have made guns a supporting character in their political campaigns.

In a 2010 campaign ad, Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia shot a copy of the cap-and-trade bill, an environmental measure that would have limited emissions, with a rifle (he was running as a Democrat but has since become an independent). I

New York Times News Service