Data overwhelmingly show Gavin Newsom’s ‘28th Amendment’ on guns will do nothing
Jack Elbaum
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This morning, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) announced that he is proposing a “28th Amendment” to the United States Constitution. The governor wrote that its purpose will be to “help end our nation’s gun violence crisis” and that his proposal is necessary because “The American people are sick of Congress’ inaction.”
The proposed amendment contains four elements — none of which are likely to actually reduce gun violence, which is a real problem across the country.
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We know this because three of the four ideas have already been studied quite extensively: namely, Newsom’s proposals to 1) have universal background checks, 2) institute a mandatory waiting period for gun purchases, and 3) ban civilians from owning “assault weapons.”
First, on universal background checks, it sounds like a perfectly reasonable idea at first glance. But this misses what Newsom actually means by “universal background checks” because, right now, background checks are already required for all gun purchases from federally licensed dealers. This is a good thing and steps should be taken to make the current system stronger.
What “universal background checks” refers to, though, is expanding them to all private transfers as well. The problem is obvious: there is no way to actually enforce this. When a Florida State University professor studied these laws in two states, he found that there was only 3.5% compliance in Oregon and 10.6% compliance in Colorado. It makes sense intuitively that it is near-impossible to effectively enforce this law because, without a huge mobilization from the government, private transactions largely happen without anyone else knowing.
Next, there are mandatory waiting periods for gun purchases. The logic behind them is that a person may buy a gun in the heat of the moment to go commit a crime or commit suicide. But, maybe if they were required to wait for a period of time before receiving the gun, they would decide not to.
This is fine logic, but empirically, the results are far from clear.
A study from Georgetown University and Duke University found that while waiting periods were “associated with reductions in the firearm suicide rate for people age 55 and older,” the policy was “not associated with reductions in homicide rates or overall suicide rates.”
Additionally, a 2003 CDC literature review “found that some studies indicated a decrease in violent outcomes associated with the delay, while others indicated an increase,” and a 2012 study found that there are “no statistical effects from waiting periods on gun crimes.” Rather, they find that “comprehensive community-based law enforcement initiatives have performed the best at reducing gun violence.”
When a lawmaker claimed there’s no evidence waiting periods “reduces violence whatsoever,” PolitiFact rated the statement as “mostly true.”
Then, there is a similar story when it comes to assault weapons bans. There is a lot of research on the subject because the U.S. actually had one for ten years, starting in 1994. The Department of Justice conducted three studies after the ban expired, and their final findings were “mixed.” Recent studies from RAND, the Minnesota Department of Corrections, and Johns Hopkins University all support this finding.
FactCheck.org rated President Joe Biden’s claim that the 1994 assault weapons ban “brought down these mass killings” as “unclear.”
Additionally, focusing on “assault weapons” does not really make sense when aiming to reduce overall gun violence because the vast majority of gun murders are committed with handguns. According to FBI statistics, between 2015 and 2019, which is the most recent data available, there has not been a single year where the number of murders with rifles topped 400, while there has also not been a single year where the number of murders with handguns was lower than 6,000.
The last proposal, raising the minimum age to purchase a firearm to 21, has not been studied nearly as much. However, Brad Polumbo points out in National Review that “the only states that have chosen to limit all gun sales to 21 and older are Hawaii and Illinois. The results have been far from clear: Illinois ranks in the top ten states for gun homicides, while Hawaii celebrates low rates of gun violence.” Additionally, Gavin Newsom says that if one cannot buy a beer then he shouldn’t be able to buy a gun, but one can join the military and vote at 18. That seems to be a better measure of adulthood than buying a beer.
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It is true that just because something will not definitely have an impact does not mean it would be terrible if it became law. But, importantly, choosing to spend time and money advocating one policy means it is not being used to push for another. Both time and money are scarce, which means every decision on how to use them is really a trade-off. As such, when there are policies and programs that have shown to be effective at addressing both community violence and mass shootings, it is imprudent to pursue those that have not been shown to work.
I have no doubt that Newsom cares about reducing violence. But even in the unlikely scenario this amendment becomes the law of the land, it will do little to solve the problem at hand.
Jack Elbaum is a summer 2023 Washington Examiner fellow.