Gavin Newsom, currently governor of California, would like to add a twenty-eighth amendment to the U.S. Constitution for the purpose of raising the minimum age to buy a gun to twenty-one, to impose universal background checks and a “reasonable” waiting period on completing transfers, and to ban entirely what he calls “assault weapons” for civilians. Whether he realizes that the police are civilians is anyone’s guess, but I presume that California cops would continue to be armed with magazines that hold more than ten rounds and can be reloaded without having to be disassembled. How long someone would be obliged to wait before receiving a purchased firearm is not specified, as anything can be called reasonable without making it so, though perhaps the Carol Bowne case would lead him to say that forty-three days would be long enough.
He is not even attempting originality here, as readers of this magazine will recall. Filmmaker Michael Moore proposed something far stricter last year, but Newsom does want us to believe that his version would leave “the 2nd Amendment intact.” Perhaps it is important to say such things if one wishes to be president someday, instead of merely the winner of yet another Oscar, and anyone who has paid attention to American politics since presidential candidates started active campaigning realizes what Newsom would like as his next job.
There is also the matter of the Equal Rights Amendment that is still grinding its way through legal arcana and state legislatures, an amendment that would require the same rights under the law for all, regardless of a person’s sex. There is, of course, no limit on how many amendments may be enacted, but if we are to have any hope to get anti-discrimination text added, something that would expand the protection of rights, trying to curtail other rights would not create the best mood among the electorate. Prohibition, the last time the Constitution was used to limit what the people could do, was seen as a women’s issue, and establishing the ability of women to vote nationwide was delayed by the perception that they would immediately exercise that right to ban alcohol. Given the political divide in this country over the exercise of rights, attacking one right that is more commonly used by men would not encourage support for protections whose function is seen as protecting women’s rights.
As I observed above, Newsom is expected to be a presidential candidate at some point in the not too distant future, and if Joe Biden is re-elected in 2024, that would put the then former governor of California up against one of the state’s former senators who would herself likely be interested in the nomination in 2028. The ability to tell Democratic voters that he offered what is more and more the only viable way to impose gun control would be at least some explanation of why Kamala Harris should not be America’s first woman to be president.
He surely must realize that there is no practical chance of getting his proposal passed. He would need two-thirds of both houses of Congress to offer the amendment or to get two-thirds of the states to seek a constitutional convention in which everything would be up for grabs and then he would have to get three-fourths of states to approve the changes. He might find national protection for permitless carry, given the twenty-seven states that currently allow that. And if state legislatures are able to control the process, a convention could mean bans on abortion for any reason, with thirteen states already having such bans and thirteen more having imposed significant restrictions following the Dobbs decision.
Twenty-six or twenty-seven are not by themselves enough states to get those passed, but those numbers are far higher than the ten or so that heavily restrict the exercise of gun rights. Any amendment can be killed by the votes of thirteen states, making any attempt to change the Second Amendment delusional in our present political climate.
With no hope of getting his proposal into law, what is the point of proposing it in the first place? Newsom’s ambitions for higher office are not in themselves a sufficient answer, since he can point to his state’s oppressive gun laws as proof of his disdain for the rights in question. But the reality is that writing new laws is not the goal of either the Democrats or the Republicans. Be the suggestion a wall along the border with Mexico, a system of universal healthcare, a limit on how many terms members of Congress may serve, a change in energy generation to sustainable methods, and on and on, what our major parties do is talk a lot and raise campaign donations on the promise of action, while doing as little as possible. The current restrictions on abortion only came after a decades-long push from activists that presidents and the Senate pandered to until the Supreme Court had been swung far enough to the right. The same may be said about gun rights. Our elected politicians and those who wish to join their ranks benefit from problems, not solutions.
What Newsom is doing here is declaring a particular bit of political fantasy: Elect me, and this is what I will talk about doing. His chief argument is likely to be, “you wouldn’t want to hear what the other guy talks about doing.” And in the end, nothing that would reduce violence—or otherwise improve the lives of all Americans—will get done.
Since there is no practical chance of such an amendment being passed, one has to ask what is going on here. First, that Newsom conflates writing law with writing amendments. Amendments generally spell out high level rights (speech, religious freedom, RKBA) or technically modify the Constitution (limiting Presidents to two terms). Prohibition was an exception. We saw how well that works.
I think Newsom is just trying to get some publicity by climbing over the heads of other Progressives to get as far left as possible and pick up some campaign checks. I hate to say this, but if were Trump v Newsom, I think I would simply flee the country.