The 28th Amendment? Make Our Day

The proposal by Governor Newsom of California to amend the Constitution in respect of guns strikes us as a moment of realism for the Democrats. We say that not because we support Mr. Newsom’s proposal. We don’t. If it were to pass, after all, it would be the first time America would have amended the Constitution to permit our government to abridge a right with which the Founders recognized had been endowed by man’s creator.The moment of realism has to do with Governor Newsom’s recognition of the fact that the Constitution doesn’t permit Americans from using the courts and legislatures to roll back the Second Amendment. What the Founders intended Americans to do in such cases is craft an amendment, present it to Congress, and, if Congress passes it, send it out to ratification. That’s the all-American, constitutional process.Then again also, too, that’s no easy gantlet. It would require approval by three-quarters of the states. Mr. Newsom, whatever else one can say about him, is not dumb. He knows that the chances of getting three quarters of the states, or even two thirds of them, or even half, would be a tall order. At the moment, John Lott tells our Russell Payne, Democrats control only 17 state governments, far short of the 38 states they need for ratification.Nor, Mr. Lott notes, do they have the votes in Congress. And one can see why. The Constitutional changes that the Democrats are pushing would raise to 21 the age at which it is legal for a person to buy a gun. The idea is that 18, 19, and 20-year-olds commit firearm-related crimes at relatively high rates. The issue, though, isn’t whether that age group commits crimes. It’s whether those who can legally buy a gun commit crimes.It turns out, Mr. Lott reports, that about 90 percent of murderers already have a violent criminal history and are already banned from buying a gun. “The ban affects only those who can pass a background check and legally buy a gun,” he says. Data show, he notes, that persons between 18 and 20 who can pass background checks tend to be as law-abiding as older people. So what is the point of Mr. Newsom’s gambit?We have rarely heard a Democrat addressing in a serious way why the American people are unlikely to ratify a rollback of the Second Amendment. It’s that, in our reckoning, Americans are smart. They know that the Democrats aren’t going to be satisfied with adjusting our gun laws at the margin. Whatever inch the Democrats gain will only whet their appetite for the next mile. We know this because even today, there is no Second Amendment freedom in New York.That could serve to explain why Mr. Newsom proposes to advance his 28th Amendment not via the Congress but by a so-called Article V convention, convoked, as the Constitution puts it, “on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States.” One doubts that such a convention would confine itself to merely reversing the Second Amendment. Even so, three-quarters of the states would still need to ratify any amendments proposed.The way we see it is that to win the fight over guns in America, the Democrats will have to change their course. They will need, in their cities, to start enforcing the Second Amendment as currently written and vouchsafed by the Supreme Court. Instead, across the land, Democrats are conniving to evade Supreme Court findings. They are, so to speak, standing in the gunsmith’s door, arms akimbo, thwarting the supreme law of the land.

The 28th Amendment? Make Our Day

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