When California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced on Thursday his intentions to limit gun rights by proposing the 28th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Article V-educated Americans rolled their eyes at the obvious media stunt.
Newsom’s new endeavor is aimed at cracking down on gun violence nationally by adding four firearm regulations to the Constitution: Raising the federal minimum age to purchase a gun to 21, requiring universal background checks, creating a reasonable waiting period for gun purchases, and banning “assault weapons.”
Anyone familiar with Article V of the Constitution understands that in order for all 50 states to come together to propose new amendments, two-thirds (34) must first agree to hold a convention. In America today, citizens in 27 states have the right to carry a firearm without a permit, which means there is mathematically no way Newsom can ever achieve the required 34-state threshold.
Gov. Newsom’s attempt to use Article V to propose the 28th Amendment is purely a political stunt with no feasibility. What further proves this is the Constitution’s requirements for ratification. Once proposed amendments are drafted and approved at a theoretical convention, three-fourths (38) of the states must pass the proposals before they are officially ratified. In other words, only 13 state legislatures can reject an amendment. It goes without saying that more than 13 states blatantly reject Newsom’s latest approach to gun control.
He’s catering to the opinions of coastal elites that think they can dominate the nation’s politics, but as he surely knows, that’s not possible when taking into account the avidly pro-Second Amendment regions of America. It appears to be more of a shot at earning national media coverage while convincing pro-gun control advocates who aren’t familiar with Article V that there’s a real chance – there’s most definitely not.
Newsom does affirm, however, efforts to use Article V for bipartisan issues. He claims that “Our ability to make a more perfect union is literally written into the Constitution.” He’s right about that, it just requires almost universal consent from the states.
According to Gallup polling, Americans are consistently tired of the federal government’s poor leadership. The pollster asks Americans every year what they think is the most important problem facing the nation today. Excluding a brief window of time during the Covid-19 emergency, the consistent, number one answer over at least the last four years has been the government, rising substantially at the start of 2023.
The number one issue is not gun violence, inflation, immigration, or any other hot-button political issue; it’s simply the people inside D.C. running the broken system – on both sides of the aisle. While restricting gun rights is an extremely partisan agenda, addressing government dysfunction is not.
There is a bipartisan effort well underway with over five million supporters. The Convention of States organization has passed identical resolutions in 19 state legislatures calling for a convention to rein in the power of the federal government.
Any type of Article V convention is limited to the topics of discussion laid out in the resolution passed by 34 states. Convention of States lays out three topics of discussion: term limits, fiscal restraints, and limits to the size and jurisdiction of the federal government. Newsom’s sole topic is gun control, meaning that all aspects of firearm constraints would be on the table during a hypothetical convention.
Newsom’s effort is solely about garnering attention in preparation for his political future.
Brianna Kraemer is a National Staff Writer at Convention of States Action.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.
