Guest post by Sam Bocetta
A small contingent of Second Amendment advocates is marching forward with their initiative to
put the right to bear and keep arms into the California Constitution.
The group seeks to engage with and gather support from the nearly 13 million gun owners that
reside in California. Since early May the group, 2AforCA has started taking millions of online
commitments on their website in the form of signatures and online signups. They hope that with
enough numbers they can add a constitutional amendment that would protect existing gun rights
in California.
The 2AforCA summarizes their petition with, “THE INITIATIVE FOR A STATE
CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT RECOGNIZING AND GUARANTEEING ALL LAW-
ABIDING CALIFORNIANS THEIR RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS.”
The goal of the movement is to stop legislation from passing that would adversely affect
gun ownership throughout California and help return gun rights to all law-abiding people
throughout the Golden State.
The online petition, which kicked in early June, the campaign picked up 80,000 commitments.
There is also an online donation area that has raised money for the campaign as well.
Bahrami said front-loading the campaign with pledged signers will help speed the petition
process along when it goes active. Once the petition process is filed and given the go-ahead to
collect signatures, which will start as soon as they reach 800,000 commitments. 2AforCA will
have six months to generate 585,000 to put the constitutional amendment on the next general
election ballot. Also, the effort will have the benefit of petitions that can be printed at home and
mailed in, similar to the successful drive to recall Gov. Grey Davis in 2002.
The effort originally started from the Veto Gunmageddon referendum effort late last fall which
aimed to gather 365,000 signatures on seven different petitions to stop a series of pending gun
control laws. Suffering from narrow six-week window and no budget, the effort came up pretty
short, collecting just over half the number of signatures needed, despite hundreds of volunteers
and signing locations.
I believe that while Californians’ right to keep and bear arms, as in the rest of the country, is
nominally covered under the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, a “Yes” vote would
help give state lawmakers a mandate to protect gun rights from future perceived
encroachments. It would also help build an additional legal bulwark to challenge current
restrictive laws.
For anyone who is a gun right supporter in California or any state for that matter, the time to
stand up for our rights is here and now. Kudos to 2AforCA for spearheading this initiative and
spread the message to your friends and family.
Author bio: Sam Bocetta is a writer at Gun News Daily, where he covers US gun news and gear reviews.
