California’s governor has proposed amending the federal constitution to
- raise the federal minimum age to buy a firearm to 21 from 18;
- mandate universal background checks;
- institute a ‘reasonable’ waiting period for all gun purchases; and
- ban assault rifles nationally;
while ‘leaving the Second Amendment unchanged.’ That’s the bad news.
The good news is that the likelihood of getting this to happen is close to zero.
But the even better news is that, finally, progressives seem to grasp that it’s necessary to amend the Constitution before passing laws restricting the right to keep and bear arms.
That realization has been a long time coming.
And it changes the game considerably. Now, instead of just bloviating about ‘common sense’ and ‘public safety’ as justifications for infringing on a fundamental right, it’s necessary to discuss why the Second Amendment is in the Bill of Rights in the first place; whether the need for citizens to be able to resist arbitrary overreach by their own government has decreased since 1791; and whether it makes any sense at all to cede control over what arms you can have to a government that you might someday have to fight.
