Desperate times call for desperate measures, and for gun control activists and anti-2A politicians these are indeed desperate times. Sure, blue states like California, Illinois and Washington are still able to pass restrictions on legal gun owners, but the prospects of many of those new laws being upheld by the courts are slim thanks to the Supreme Court’s decision in Bruen, and even as the anti-gunners put more laws in place, more than a million guns are being sold each and every month.

What’s an anti-gunner to do? Well, in Gavin Newsom’s case, call for a constitutional amendment to enshrine gun control into the U.S. Constitution.

“Our ability to make a more perfect union is literally written into the Constitution,” said Governor Gavin Newsom. “So today, I’m proposing the 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution to do just that. The 28th Amendment will enshrine in the Constitution common sense gun safety measures that Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and gun owners overwhelmingly support – while leaving the 2nd Amendment unchanged and respecting America’s gun-owning tradition.”

The 28th Amendment will permanently enshrine four broadly supported gun safety principles into the U.S. Constitution:

• Raising the federal minimum age to purchase a firearm from 18 to 21;
• Mandating universal background checks to prevent truly dangerous people from purchasing a gun that could be used in a crime;
• Instituting a reasonable waiting period for all gun purchases; and
• Barring civilian purchase of assault weapons that serve no other purpose than to kill as many people as possible in a short amount of time – weapons of war our nation’s founders never foresaw.

In his press release Newsom says the California legislature will soon call for an Article V convention of the states to approve the proposed amendment, but don’t expect that to happen anytime soon.

Getting 33 other states on board would be almost impossibly difficult. Democrats now control 20 state legislatures across the country. But Newsom, who seeded his political committee with $10 million and has spent time on the national stage trolling Republican Govs. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Greg Abbott of Texas, has for years crusaded against the gun industry and reaped the political benefits in a state where voters broadly support strong curbs on firearms.

I have a better chance of being elected president in 2024 than Newsom has of getting 13 states with either split control or GOP control to hop on board his gun control bandwagon, and I’m sure the governor is aware of that fact. I don’t think that Newsom seriously believes that an Article V convention to enact his proposed 28th Amendment will be held in this political environment, but he’s trying to push the Overton Window on the bare minimum gun controls that the gun control lobby wants to put in place, as well as appear to offer a “reasonable” alternative to the wackos in Colorado who’ve been demanding Gov. Jared Polis sign an executive order banning gun sales and possession as part of their effort to repeal the Second Amendment.

This is mostly a political stunt, but it’s also another signal that the anti-gunners are desperate to go big in light of the Bruen decision. As I said earlier this week, I still believe that their primary goal at the moment is to take control of both chambers of Congress in the 2024 elections and pack the Supreme Court full of anti-gun justices who’ll overturn Heller, McDonald, and Bruen, but if they fail then they’ll fall on their backup plan of obliterating our right to keep and bear arms by amending the Constitution. Newsom’s call for a constitutional convention is seeding that ground, but when/if the gun control lobby gets on board with an amendment I don’t think they’re going to back Newsom’s proposal. If they’re going to seriously try to change the Constitution, my guess is they’re going to go for an outright repeal instead of enshrining an “assault weapons” ban, waiting periods, universal background checks, and an under-21 gun ban into our founding document.