Newsom's amendment is "most important idea in US politics"

(AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

California Gov. Gavin Newsom hasn’t gotten the traction from his proposed 28th Amendment that he probably expected.

After all, it doesn’t take much to recognize that this is something that isn’t going to go anywhere. There’s just not enough support in the right places for such a thing to happen.

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But it seems that at least one person is enamored with Newsom’s proposal.

Gavin Newsom’s new campaign for a 28th Amendment is the most important political idea in the country today.

But you wouldn’t know that from reading media reports following the California governor’s proposal to enshrine four popular gun control measures in a new federal constitutional amendment.

Instead, political opponents dismissed Newsom’s proposal as at best a waste of time, and at worst a dereliction of gubernatorial duty. Reporters called it a mere tactic in his rhetorical and legal war with the red states. Republicans labeled it a distraction from his job running California. Editorialists wrote that it was crazy, because, as the San Jose Mercury News argued, it’s virtually impossible to change the Constitution.

In truth, such objections are far crazier than Newsom’s amendment. The governor isn’t just taking on the American addiction to violence.  He’s taking on flaws in the U.S. Constitution that impact his ability to govern, and keep Californians safe.

First, I’d like to thank the author for acknowledging that gun control is unconstitutional.

I mean, what other “flaws in the U.S. Constitution” could he be referencing other than the fact that the Second Amendment expressly prevents gun regulations that interfere with our right to keep and bear arms?

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Beyond that, though, the author of this piece is more than a tad delusional.

See, for Newsom’s proposal to be the most important idea in US politics, it would actually have to have some shot at being ratified.

As things currently stand, these proposals aren’t likely to get the necessary support in Congress to be kicked to the states for ratification, nor are there enough states that have signaled support for such regulation to suggest they’ll ratify it.

For example, it takes 38 states to ratify an amendment to the Constitution. There are currently nine states with an assault weapon ban on the books, the latest being Illinois.

If the states won’t pass this measure on their own, why would anyone think they’d ratify it?

Then there’s the fatal flaw in the whole proposal: Repeating the alleged failures of the Founding Fathers.

Anti-gunners routinely argue that the Founding Fathers couldn’t have envisioned assault weapons, which is why they didn’t exempt them from the Second Amendment. They have no evidence of this, of course, but that’s the argument they make.

Yet Newsom’s proposal only bans assault weapons. It doesn’t account for what happens if something new comes out that somehow manages to be enough of a leap forward that current gun control doesn’t apply to it.

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Rail guns or lasers or whatever, weapons development isn’t going to stand still. That’s one constant in human history. This proposal doesn’t look like it will be remotely prepared for any kind of leap forward in weapon development, which is fine with me, but I’m pretty sure both Newsom and the sycophantic author of this piece wouldn’t be thrilled.

So to call this “the most important idea in U.S. politics” isn’t just a misnomer, it’s the sign of someone who really doesn’t understand reality all that well.

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