California Constitutional Amendments

[Rick Travis]

Recently Jason Hoisington posted the following:

California Constitutional Amendment – The Right to Keep and Bear Arms Enumerated:

Under the current California State Constitution, there is no declaration of an explicit right to keep and bear arms. The closest provision to that is expressed in Article 1, Section 1, and reads as follows: “All people are by nature free and independent and have inalienable rights. Among these are enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, possessing, and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining safety, happiness, and privacy.”

This bill would officially codify the right to keep and bear arms in the California State Constitution and a fundamental right that deserves to be protected at the state level. Modeled after colonial declarations of rights, this constitutional amendment would state: “For the proper defense of a free state, and the fundamental right of self-preservation against all violent assailants and oppressors, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. The people retain the right of the usage of arms as the necessary safeguard of liberty, amongst other lawful purposes.”

Jason made sound arguments for the need for this and other constitutional amendments. We have also considered making hunting a right in California since fishing is. This has been done in over half of the states. The right to Self-Defense, Castle Doctrine and the list goes on and we would all agree are common sense amendments.

In every case this is the lift to make it happen:

1. Legislative Proposal:
The California State Legislature can propose amendments by a two-thirds vote in both the Assembly and Senate.
The proposed amendment then goes on a statewide ballot for voter approval.

Issue: Is we have to break the super majority stronghold. This should happen in the Senate in the 2026 elections if we are successful, the Assembly should happen in 2028 if not sooner. The ability to achieve this size of a vote will take massive amounts of grassroots education and ad buys to sway public opinion.

2. Citizen-Initiated Amendment (Initiative/proposition):
Citizens can propose amendments by collecting signatures on a petition equal to a certain percentage (currently 8%) of the votes cast in the last gubernatorial election.
The Secretary of State then places the proposed amendment on the ballot for voter approval.

Issue: This will require a massive signature drive. The 2018 Gubernatorial saw 6,862,254 votes casted thus requiring a signature threshold (8%) of 549,000 signatures that are approved and thus we would need to collect between 750K plus to survive the scrutiny. The cost of signature gathers is between 8-12 per and thus we would have to raise a minimum of 4-5 million to qualify and launch an effective ad campaign.

3. Voter Approval:
All amendments, regardless of how they were proposed, require a simple majority of voters to be approved.
Once approved by voters, the amendment becomes part of the California Constitution.

I am not saying we cannot do this I am simply saying there is a steep road to accomplish this. We are building the infrastructure to get there.

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