The Patriot Post® · Gavin Newsom Wants Your Guns

Democrats truly hate the Second Amendment, and they ultimately want to repeal it. Virtually none of them will admit as much because they know it would hurt them politically, but they’re working in that direction.

Enter California Governor Gavin Newsom, the Democrats’ shadow presidential candidate who has proposed a 28th Amendment to the Constitution as a means to enact some serious gun regulations and bans.

This is truly big news: A Democrat admits that banning guns requires amending the Constitution, and he’s willing to work through the legitimate process of an Article V convention of states to do it.

Then again, it’s hardly praiseworthy to use the Constitution instead of merely unconstitutional laws and executive fiats to actually take away the God-given rights of American citizens.

Newsom says his amendment “permanently enshrines four additions to the laws of our land.” Those are raising the age to purchase a gun from 18 to 21, mandating universal background checks, creating a waiting period for all firearms purchases, and — wait for it — banning “assault rifles.”

Let’s address each one.

Newsom says that “if you can’t buy a beer, you shouldn’t be able to buy a gun.” There’s certainly room to argue that our methods of determining the right age for legalizing various things is a bit … inconsistent. For example, he doesn’t mention that men and women can join the military — volunteering to give their lives for their country while wielding firearms in battle — at age 18. To say the least, it seems odd to prohibit those same people from owning firearms.

Nor does Newsom mention abortion. “Under California law,” says the state’s website, “anyone in California who is pregnant has a legal right to choose to have an abortion before viability.” Minors don’t need parental consent, and you don’t even have to be a resident of California. So you can take the life of an unborn child at, say, age 13, but you shouldn’t be allowed to own a gun for self-defense until age 21. Got it.

The same is true for “gender-affirming care” for minors in California, which the state has gone to great lengths to protect, even undermining parents and other states. Young teens can lop off body parts, but don’t let an 18-year-old buy a gun!

As for background checks, our Mark Alexander thoroughly explored what that actually means. We’ll sum up with a couple of big points: The vast majority of gun sales already include background checks; the ones that don’t are between individuals, often family members. The danger of expanding checks is the likely creation of a national firearms registry, which opens the door for inevitably bloody confiscation efforts that would likely violate other rights in the Bill of Rights.

Waiting periods for all gun purchases may seem like a reasonable concession to many Americans. Newsom even used the word “reasonable” instead of specifying a number of days. Why, for example, allow a hot-headed ex-boyfriend to run out to buy a gun to assault his ex? How about a few days to cool off first?

Well, turn that scenario around. What if that woman needs a gun today to defend herself or others against a suddenly violent man? Too bad, says Newsom. Wait a few days and good luck.

Newsom began his video by pulling heartstrings with references to mass shootings, yet few if any killers buy a gun and perpetrate their massacres later that same day. Such assaults usually entail careful planning, and assailants would not be stopped or deterred by anything Newsom proposes.

Which brings us to the last plank: banning “assault rifles,” a fabricated term with no legal meaning but that he calls “weapons of war our Founding Fathers never foresaw.” They never foresaw free speech via videos on the Internet, either. What the Founders did understand is that Liberty depends on a citizenry armed with the very weapons necessary to take on tyrannical government. Today, that means the most commonly owned “modern musket” on the market. Americans own an estimated 44 million AR-15s. Newsom only says the word “ban,” but does anyone doubt his amendment would necessitate those aforementioned bloody confiscation efforts?

Beto O'Rourke infamously said, “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15.” Newsom probably nodded in agreement.

Newsom’s justification is primarily mass shootings, which account for less than 1% of annual murders. Year after year, long guns of any type are used in fewer homicides than hands and feet. Most murders occur in Democrat-run urban centers.

Newsom promises that his proposed amendment leaves “the Second Amendment intact” and respects America’s “gun-owning tradition.” That comment is overlaid with hunters — the only people Democrats seem to think have any reason for owning guns. The Second Amendment was not written to protect hunting.

Finally, Newsom hides behind popular opinion, sharing polling data ostensibly showing “overwhelming support” for all four of his initiatives. This is misleading in several ways. First of all and most importantly, constitutional rights don’t depend on support from media polls. In fact, the Second Amendment in particular exists to protect a minority from a tyrannical majority and the government itself. Other rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights are not up for debate based on polls, and they are ensured by the Second Amendment.

Those polls are also misinformation. The Leftmedia is guilty of pollaganda — telling people what to think and then polling them on whether they understood what they were told. Mass shootings receive massive media attention, scaring people everywhere, while the media tells us things that could supposedly save us. Then they ask viewers whether they believe those things could save us.

We mentioned above that Newsom is a shadow presidential candidate and we don’t say so without reason. Joe Biden is proving himself incapable of even standing up straight, and he still may not really be the Democrat nominee for 2024. Newsom is positioning himself to take the mantle. At the very end of his video, he directs viewers to a website for his new political action committee. Any funds from that PAC could be used … to fund his presidential campaign.

So it seems that Politico is right for once: Newsom’s proposal isn’t so much serious as it is “designed to draw maximum public attention.”