Whatever else Gov.
Gavin Newsom
’s (D-CA) campaign for a 28th Amendment gets wrong about guns, at least it implicitly admits that the Democratic Party’s
gun control
wish list is unconstitutional under the
Second Amendment
. After all, why propose an amendment if the Constitution doesn’t forbid what you want to accomplish?
Leaving Newsom’s admission aside, however, his 28th Amendment would accomplish nothing, at least nothing good. At worst, it would lay the legal groundwork for confiscating every gun in the United States.
BIDEN’S LAND GRAB HURTS WORKING FAMILIES
Newsom has offered no text for his amendment, only four “principles” he wants written into it. This allows him to propose “barring civilian purchase of assault weapons” without ever having to define exactly what an “assault weapon” is.
Define it too narrowly and gun manufacturers will create new models that skirt the definition. Define it too broadly by saying it is “any semi-automatic firearm with a detachable magazine,” for example, and you outlaw almost half the handguns in the nation. If the text of Newsom’s 28th Amendment is ever written, he’ll have to choose. The first option renders his amendment useless; the second would mean it never gets the votes to become law.
Not all of Newsom’s principles are so vague. Raising the legal age to buy a firearm from 18 to 21 is an easy bright line to enforce, but there isn’t any evidence that it would reduce gun crimes at all. But how can we raise the age to 21 when people may vote when three years younger than that?
Newsom’s third principle calls for a “reasonable waiting period for all gun purchases.” What is “reasonable” is not defined. We know from existing state waiting periods that they reduce gun suicides for those over 55, but they have no effect on gun homicide rates overall.
Finally, Newsom calls for “universal background checks” for gun purchases. But all commercial gun purchases are subject to universal background checks already. What Newsom is really calling for here is background checks for all private firearm transfers. Anytime anyone transfers gun ownership, from father to son, for example, or from neighbor to neighbor, Newsom wants the federal government to know about it.
Some states have tried this, and compliance is nonexistent. It is
estimated
that only 3.5% of private transfers in Oregon, for example, complied with that state’s universal background check law. The only way to achieve anything approaching effective compliance would be for the federal government to create a national gun registry and force all owners to register their firearms with the feds. That is the Democrats’ real goal with a universal background check system: a new government database that knows who owns every gun in the country and where they live.
Newsom’s gun grabbing pitch is predicated on the suggestion that mass shootings are a rational security threat and that the public, after “another few dozen of these in the next year or two,” will accept repealing the Second Amendment.
But
mass shootings make up just 1% of all gun deaths
each year. If Newsom wants to do something about gun violence, he should attack the George Soros district attorneys in his state and across the country who refuse to prosecute minorities charged with gun possession crimes. Democrats need to focus on enforcing existing gun laws before they try to create new ones.
