Democrats are starting to doubt California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan for a convention of states under Article V of the Constitution to pass a Twenty-eighth Amendment on gun control, saying it could open a “Pandora’s Box.”
As Breitbart News noted last month, Newsom has proposed an Article V convention, which could be held if two-thirds of the states agree, to pass and approve a new amendment to circumvent the Second Amendment itself.
The idea has the political benefit of letting Newsom claim he wants to leave the Second Amendment “intact,” even as he proposes the most radical step possible to satisfy Democrats’ demands to remove guns from society.
But as the San Francisco Chronicle reported on Wednesday, Democrats worry that there is no way to limit an Article V convention — which has never been held before — to the topic of gun control, and that conservatives might use the meeting to introduce a variety of constitutional amendments that some have backed for years.
The Chronicle noted:
[S]ome California Democrats are concerned about the potential unintended consequences of a constitutional convention and the ways in which Republicans could use such an event to further their own policy ideas. Some believe the effort has plenty of benefits for Newsom as he travels the country and raises money to drum up support, but has little chance of being implemented.
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Twenty-nine state legislatures in the U.S. are controlled by Republicans, and in recent years Republicans have been the ones calling for a constitutional convention. That worries some Democrats like state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, who fears Newsom’s proposal could unintentionally open the Constitution up to amendments from conservative states to undermine the rights of LGBTQ people, immigrants seeking U.S. citizenship and people trying to get an abortion or use birth control.
“It’s unclear whether there can be a convention limited to one topic,” Wiener said. “We need to make sure that we’re not going to inadvertently trigger a general constitutional convention, because that could go real bad real fast.”
The idea of an Article V convention has been championed most aggressively by conservative radio host and litigator Mark Levin, whose 2013 book The Liberty Amendments has spurred a nationwide effort to hold a convention of states aimed at passing ten specific amendments to shore up the Constitution’s original vision.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.