Over at Reason, Jacob Sullum took issue with that omission, and for good reason.

While this year's Republican Party platform makes only a passing reference to Second Amendment rights, the platform approved at the Democratic National Convention this week does not mention them at all. But it does include eight references to "gun safety" and a section that brags about the Biden administration's accomplishments in this area while laying out an agenda of additional firearm restrictions.

That treatment of this subject is similar to the approach that Democrats took in 2016, when their platform mentioned "the rights of responsible gun owners" but did not elucidate the basis of those rights, and in 2020, when the platform did not go even that far. The 2016 platform devoted a paragraph to gun control, which became two paragraphs in 2020 and has now expanded to five. Neither of the two most recent platforms so much as alludes to respect for gun rights.

By contrast, Democrats in 2000 promised to "respect the rights of hunters, sportsmen, and legitimate gun owners." Four years later, after the gun issue, including Al Gore's support for banning "assault weapons," was widely blamed for contributing to George W. Bush's election, Democrats promised to "protect Americans' Second Amendment right to own firearms." The 2008 and 2012 platforms included similar language, in both cases explicitly invoking the Second Amendment, which disappeared in the 2016 platform and now does not even seem like a dim memory for Democrats.

Whatever you make of former President Donald Trump's evolution on gun rights, which seems to reflect political expendience rather than true conviction, he at least understands the importance of paying lip service to the Second Amendment. The current Democratic Party, by contrast, is intent on pushing gun control without acknowledging any constitutional limits on it.

Here's the thing, though. None of this is shocking, and not just because there's little history suggesting the Democrats actually care about the Second Amendment.

The reason they don't mention it is that they want it gone.

Look at California Gov. Gavin Newsom's proposal for a new amendment to the Constitution. That alone suggests Democrats see the Second Amendment not as something that enshrines an essential liberty but as something that's simply in the way.

They're not going to acknowledge that as the basis of our gun rights because it would suggest they know they need to do something unconstitutional in order to enact anything in those five paragraphs.

So, they omit it. They left it out because it was inconvenient to their explicitly stated goals.

But that makes those goals even more nefarious, in my book. They know it's unconstitutional. They know the Founding Fathers were against this exact sort of thing, and yet they continue to push for something they know is unconstitutional. They know it's wrong and they keep doing it.

At some point, though, they need to answer for why this is the case. They need to tell us why they refuse to acknowledge the Second Amendment is part of the Constitution and that gun rights are constitutionally protected rights no different than freedom of speech or freedom of religion.

The party of "I support the Second Amendment but..." is also the party that can't seem to bring themselves to acknowledge it in their own platform. I mean, it's not like there's a maximum word count or anything. They could at least acknowledge it exists.

But in their minds, it doesn't.