(The Center Square) – California governor Gavin Newsom’s national constitutional gun amendment faced its first committee hearing amid pushback from allies and experts, clearing the California Senate Committee on Public Safety with three votes in favor, one against, and one abstention from prominent progressive Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco).
The joint Assembly and Senate resolution has dozens of coauthors across both houses of the Legislature and calls for an Article V Constitutional convention to bring national gun laws in line with California’s. Proposed changes include universal background checks, ending gun ownership to almost everyone under 21, creating a minimum waiting period before a gun is transferred to a buyer, and banning “assault weapons and other weapons of war.” Two thirds of legislatures would have to adopt resolutions calling for a convention, and two thirds of states would have to ratify whatever comes out of the convention.
Critics, including Laurel Brodzinsky, the legislative director for California Common Cause, the California branch of national left-of-center watchdog group Common Cause, the lack of precedent for a national convention, other than the convention that originally wrote the Constitution, is cause for concern.
Noting she and her organization do not oppose the measures the resolution supports adopting, Brodzinsky said, “There simply are not clear legal guardrails in place and our only historical precedent of a federal convention was the one held in 1787 when the Constitution itself was drafted and those gathered threw out the rules that were intended to govern their purpose and authority of amending the articles of confederation, instead crafting an entirely new document.”
Wiener, a consistent ally of Newsom’s and prominent advocate for adopting more stringent gun laws, reiterated his support for the governor and gun safety before explaining why he would be abstaining from voting for the resolution.
“This is not a non-binding resolution. This is California going on record for the process of triggering a constitutional convention. When you reach a legal threshold, a constitutional convention is triggered,” said Wiener. “There is nothing that says the calls for a convention have to be identical. There is nothing in the Constitution that says we can have a Constitutional convention limited to one topic.”
“The same extremists that have completely written the second amendment would also like to rewrite reproductive health access, LGBTQ rights, the separation of church and state, and they want to undermine voting rights. For that reason I won’t be able to support this today,” continued Wiener, who abstained from the bill.
Senator Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh (R-Yucaipa), the lone opposition vote against the bill, asked an expert from the California Department of Justice whether or not other states could simply adopt the four proposed measures on their own, to which representatives confirmed there is nothing stopping states from doing so.
Standing next to the CADOJ representative and speaking as a witness for the committee, Aaron Tang, a professor of Constitutional law at University California, Davis School of Law said, “the point of SJR 7 is not to have a constitutional convention tomorrow, it’s to shape the hearts and minds of people so we can reach a sensible middle ground.”
With typical Senate rules suspended for this measure to allow its rapid passage, the bill will not face any further committee votes and will move to the Senate floor.
