Convention of States” wants to protect gun rights and destroy them, too
The National Constitution Center is an organization that trains volunteers and activists to rewrite the US Constitution through the Constitutional Convention process. They call this the “Constitutional Drafting Project”, and in 2020 they worked with so-called “Constitutional Scholars” to convene three different teams to perform radical rewrites of the US Constitution. They referred to these as “Proposed Amendments”, despite not being amendments in the sense that people think of when they think of Constitutional Amendments.
No, these were full rewrites, available as downloadable PDFs, of brand-new Constitutions that were meant to appeal to Libertarians, Conservatives, and Progressives. The notion, it seems, was to find ways to “Sell” a New Constitution to people of differing ideological views; that way, the notion of a Constitutional Convention (sometimes erroneously called a “Convention of States”) could seem more appetizing.
The “Conservative Constitution” is credited to 4 authors; first among them is Robert P. George. Remember that name. In it, the 2nd Amendment was not just trampled: It was mutilated. The plain simplicity of our current time-tested 2nd Amendment was replaced with this proposed language… by so-called “Conservatives”:
“Neither the States nor the United State shall make or enforce any law infringing the right to keep and bear arms of the sort ordinarily used for self-defense or recreational purposes, provided that States, and the United States in places subject to its general regulatory authority, may enact and enforce reasonable regulations on the bearing of arms, and the keeping of arms by persons determined, with due process, to be dangerous to themselves or others.”
Partnered with the “Conservative Constitution” was, of course, the “Progressive Constitution“, which was also published by the National Constitution Center as an “Amendment Proposal” to the US Constitution. It was a bit more straightforward but accomplished the same thing as the so-called “Conservative Constitution”. It read,
“The right of the people to keep and bear arms is subject to reasonable regulation by the United States and by the States.”
From this, we can glean two important pieces of information:
- When organizations say, “Propose amendments to the US Constitution”, that means “Re-write the US Constitution”.
- Robert P. George himself helped author text to substantially undermine the 2nd Amendment of the US Constitution.
Here’s the interesting bit, though: Robert P. George works with “Convention of States Action” as a member of their Legal Board.
That’s right: The organization that loves to tell people that an Article V Constitutional Convention cannot be used to undermine the 2nd Amendment put a guy on their Legal Board who drafted a full rewrite of the US Constitution to do exactly that.
Not long after all this, the California legislature enacted SJR-7. This is a Constitutional Convention application they passed to undermine the right to keep and bear arms, and it has been enacted by the California Secretary of State. In it, it says,
“Resolved, That this application shall be considered as covering the same subject matter as applications from other states to the United States Congress to call a convention to propose a constitutional amendment for each respective purpose set forth herein and that this application shall be aggregated with such applications for the purpose of attaining the two-thirds of states necessary to require Congress to call a limited convention on each respective subject, but shall not be aggregated with any other applications on any other subject; and be it further”
What this means, in essence, is that from the point of view of California, any Constitutional Convention under Article V is now related to firearms. There is no way to have a Constitutional Convention without the 2nd Amendment being on the docket, since California would have to attend that convention. Their delegates have orders from their state legislature, explicitly, to undermine the 2nd Amendment.
In conclusion: Don’t fall for the “Convention of States” arguments. They may pretend to be a conservative organization, and I’m sure that there are a lot of fine conservatives that work with them, but from the very beginning, an Article V Constitutional Convention has always been a trap.
The goal? Destroy the US Constitution, especially the 2nd Amendment.
Please reject all attempts to bring about an Article V Convention. Thank you.
