Newsom Pushes Constitutional Amendment to Restrict Gun Ownership

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) proposed an amendment to the U.S. Constitution Thursday which he hopes can be secured and used to restrict gun ownership.

The Associated Press reported that Newsom’s amendment, which would be the twenty-eighth amendment, would institute a waiting period on firearm purchases, ban firearms which Democrats label “assault weapons,” and secure universal background checks.

California already has all three of the above-mentioned gun controls, yet the state led the nation in “active shooter incidents” in 2021.

Newsom’s office released a statement on the proposed amendment which did not provide specifics on the proposed waiting period. It simply said the period should be “reasonable.”

The statement was also used to elaborate on the Governor’s opposition to “assault weapons,” describing the firearms as “weapons of war our nation’s founders never foresaw.” (Ironically, when the Second Amendment was ratified in 1791, the colonists owned and used many of the same weapons military personnel owned and used.)

Newsom also wants to use his amendment to prohibit 18–20 year-olds from purchasing guns. He now needs 34 state legislatures–which would necessarily be a combination of blue and red states–to pass resolutions calling for a constitutional convention to begin the process of securing a twenty-eighth amendment to the Constitution.

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in 2010. and he holds a Ph.D. in Military History, with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.