BELLEVUE, WA – California Governor Gavin Newsom’s proposed 28th Amendment is a blatant attempt to eradicate individual rights from the Constitution, demonstrating just how far the anti-gun-rights mindset is willing to go in an effort to foist its prohibition agenda on the American public, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.
“Newsom’s proposal reeks of infringement on Second Amendment rights,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “He wants gun controls permanently enshrined, while claiming these measures ‘will respect the country’s gun-owning tradition protected by the Second Amendment.’ That is so self-contradictory it is laughable. If he truly respected this nation’s tradition of private gun ownership, he wouldn’t attack it by pushing this nonsense.”
The governor wants to raise the minimum age to purchase a firearm to age 21, which immediately sets the right to keep and bear arms apart from other rights enjoyed by citizens when they reach their 18th birthday. He would constitutionally mandate a so-called “universal background check” which would translate to universal registration. He would institute an undefined “reasonable waiting period,” which would turn the Second Amendment right into a government-regulated privilege, because a right delayed is a right denied.
His proposal also prohibits law-abiding citizens from purchasing, and therefore owning, modern semiautomatic rifles, which further erodes the constitutionally-protected individual right to keep and bear arms.
“Newsom’s announcement claims these are all ‘common sense’ measures, but there’s nothing sensible at all in this scheme” Gottlieb said. “This is a thinly-disguised effort to repeal the Second Amendment by making it constitutionally allowable to infringe upon and impair the exercise of a fundamental right Americans have enjoyed for more than 230 years.
“More importantly,” he observed, “there is nothing in his proposal about holding criminals accountable or protecting the right of self-defense. It’s all about restricting the rights of honest citizens.
“Gavin Newsom isn’t fooling anyone with this deceitful gambit, except maybe himself and the national media,” Gottlieb stated. “The establishment press and the political far left may lap this up, but the American public isn’t that gullible. Here’s a guy with ambitions to be president, and what he is proposing would smash a cornerstone of our federal constitution. For him to say otherwise suggests he is frighteningly delusional.”
About the CCRKBA:
With more than 650,000 members and supporters nationwide, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (www.ccrkba.org) is one of the nation’s premier gun rights organizations. As a non-profit organization, the Citizens Committee is dedicated to preserving firearms freedoms through active lobbying of elected officials and facilitating grass-roots organization of gun rights activists in local communities throughout the United States.
