Mary Katharine Ham on Thursday Democrats would "fail miserably" if they followed political analyst Kirsten Powers’ suggestion to restrict semiautomatic firearms.
Ham said the category of "assault weapons" does not include all semiautomatic, but if Democrats did push for a ban on semiautomatics, they would lose.
"If you put that to the American people, I think you'd fail, and I think that's the reason Democrats do not run on exactly that," Ham said. "Kirsten suggested it earlier, and even went to handguns. That is a thing that you can run on; I think it would fail miserably, I think it would be very bad for the Democratic Party."
"I think they know that, that’s why they don't run on it, because the NRA is not some nefarious organization—it is powerful because it has a lot of people who care deeply about this right that's in the Constitution that the courts backed up," she added.
Host Jake Tapper then said Democrats were unable to pass an assault weapons ban back when they did control Congress. He said, incorrectly, that Republicans had a majority in the Senate in 2013 and the assault weapons ban failed again, but he accurately pointed out that several Democrats were against the ban.
But Powers brought it back to the NRA, which she said "actually is a nefarious organization," and she criticized Ham for her point that the NRA has broad support.
"People always say that they have supporters. Guess what? Planned Parenthood has supporters, and you don't like Planned Parenthood, and you’ve criticized Planned Parenthood, and we’re are always hearing about how bad it Planned Parenthood is," she told Ham, saying the NRA is not "above criticism."
Ham said she did not consider the NRA "above criticism," as Powers charged, but Powers went on to say they are extreme and should be treated as a group "outside the mainstream."
Ham responded by saying that banning semiautomatic weapons is not mainstream.
"I think the position of banning all semiautomatic weapons in this country is well outside of the mainstream, it is why Democrats don’t run on it, and it’s not because the NRA spends some money which by the way is dwarfed by a bunch of others," Ham said.
Powers then said she does not support banning semiautomatics, but she did say handguns are banned in cities, which is incorrect. Ham corrected her, but Powers was still going on, and she concluded by saying she does not want to ban "all guns."
Tapper asked Powers what guns should be banned.
"High capacity magazines, at a minimum," Powers replied.
Tapped asked "how many magazines" Powers would allow, and she did not have an exact answer.
"This is all I’ll say: a high capacity gun that you can go in and mow down 17 people and kill them, I have a problem with," Powers said.
Banning semi-automatic guns was a suggestion that received loud cheers at a CNN town hall the night before. Democrats have not put that on the table, although Sen. Dianne Feinstein has proposed renewing the assault-weapons ban.
Democrat Rep. Dan Kildee (Mich.) said specifically Thursday that he would not support banning all semiautomatics.