California Gov. Gavin Newsom pretty much stole the spotlight last week when he called for a constitutional amendment codifying a handful of gun control proposals.

The proposal is unworkable and not likely to pass anyway, but he made it and the media is taking the proposal seriously.

Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy is taking it seriously as well, but not as a policy suggestion. He sees it as something else.

Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy and Gov. Gavin Newsom are duking it out on Twitter over Newsom’s purposed 28th Constitutional Amendment to combat gun violence.

Early Thursday morning, Newsom tweeted his proposal for raising the minimum age for gun buyers to 21, requiring universal background checks and a “reasonable waiting period” for gun purchases, and banning civilians from buying assault weapons.

McCarthy tore into Newsom’s idea in a tweet, saying the 2nd Amendment is sufficient and claiming that Newsom is campaigning for the White House by pushing “extreme” ideas.

Beyond that is a bit of petty back and forth that I’m not going to get into. I could, but it’s a separate topic entirely and beyond the purpose of this post.

No, this one is about the idea that Newsom is prepping for a run at the presidency, and I’m with McCarthy on this one.

Look, this is the kind of thing that the media and the base will call bold, decisive action, all while ignoring the fact that there’s nowhere near enough support to make that happen. In most polls, there’s not enough support for these measures in general, and a lot of people who want to see them happen may not be so sure about a constitutional amendment putting them in place.

After all, laws can be repealed with a certain degree of ease. Amendments can’t be repealed nearly as easily.

So yeah, this isn’t going to happen.

What it will do, though, is play well with anti-gun Democrats throughout the nation, people who want to see these laws in place and will do just about anything they can do legally to make it happen. Some aren’t all that worried about legality, even.

Newsom has claimed now isn’t the time for him to run for president, my guess is that he’s not entirely sure Biden will last through the primaries. After all, the president is 80 years old. He turns 82 shortly after the general election. There’s no guarantee he’ll wake up in the morning, for crying out loud.

So, while Newsom isn’t going to challenge the president, he’s setting the stage to jump in should the situation change.

And if it doesn’t, well, if four years he’ll still have this proposal to hang his anti-gun credentials on. He’ll even be able to say that he did it well before he announced because he thinks it’s what this nation needs, not what’s good for his campaign–not that any of us would believe that, mind you, but it won’t stop him from saying it.

No, Newsom is running and this is part of it. It’s just a matter of when.