2A Open Letter

Attachment: 4690/2A_OpenLetter_COSA042025.pdf

O

ur constitutional rights,

especially our Second

Amendment right to keep

and bear arms, are in peril. With every

tragic violent crime, liberals renew

their demands for Congress and

state legislatures to enact so-called

“commonsense gun control” measures

designed to chip away at our individual

constitutional right to armed self-

defense.

Indeed, were it not for the

determination and sheer political

muscle of the National Rifle

Association, Senator Feinstein’s

2013 bill to outlaw so-called “assault

weapons” and other firearms might

well have passed.

But the most potent threat facing

the Second Amendment comes

not from Congress, but from the

Supreme Court. Four justices of the

Supreme Court do not believe that

the Second Amendment guarantees

an individual right to keep and bear

arms. They believe that Congress and

state legislatures are free not only to

restrict firearms ownership by law-

abiding Americans, but to ban firearms

altogether. If the Liberals get one

more vote on the Supreme Court, the

Second Amendment will be no more.

Constitutional law has been the

dominant focus of my practice for

most of my career as a lawyer, first in

the Justice Department as President

Reagan’s chief constitutional lawyer

and the chairman of the President’s

Working Group on Federalism, and

since then as a constitutional litigator

in private practice. For almost three

decades, I have represented dozens

of states and many other clients in

constitutional cases, including many

Second Amendment cases. In 2001,

for example, I argued the first federal

appellate case to hold that the Second

Amendment guarantees every law-

abiding responsible adult citizen an

individual right to keep and bear

arms. And in 2013 I testified before

the Senate in opposition to Senator

Feinstein’s anti-gun bill, arguing

that it would violate the Second

Amendment.

So I am not accustomed to being

accused of supporting a scheme that

would “put our Second Amendment

rights on the chopping block.” This

charge is being hurled by a small gun

rights group against me and many

other constitutional conservatives

because we have urged the states

to use their sovereign power under

Article V of the Constitution to

call for a convention for proposing

constitutional amendments designed

to rein in the federal government’s

power.

The real threat to our constitutional

rights today is posed not by an Article

V convention of the states, but by an

out-of-control federal government,

The 2nd Amendment and Convention of States

Convention of States Action- Updated April 2025

THE SECOND AMENDMENT

and Convention of States

An Open Letter Concerning

By Charles J. Cooper

—

LONG TIME CONSTITUTIONAL LAW LITIGATOR FOR THE NRA

exercising powers that it does not

have and abusing powers that it does.

The federal government’s unrelenting

encroachment upon the sovereign

rights of the states and the individual

rights of citizens, and the Supreme

Court’s failure to prevent it, have

led me to join the Legal Board of

Reference for the Convention of

States Project.

[Convention of States] mission is to

urge 34 state legislatures to call for

an Article V convention limited to

proposing constitutional amendments

that “impose fiscal restraints on the

federal government, limit its power

and jurisdiction, and impose term

limits on its officials and members of

Congress.”

I am joined in this effort by many

well-known constitutional

c o n s e r v a t i v e s ,

including Mark

Levin, Professor

Randy Barnett,

Professor Robert

George, Michael Farris,

Mark Meckler, Professor

Robert Natelson, Andrew

McCarthy, Professor John Eastman,

Ambassador Boyden Gray, and

Professor Nelson Lund. All of us have

carefully studied the original meaning

of Article V, and not one of us would

support an Article V convention if we

believed it would pose a significant

threat to our Second Amendment

rights or any of our constitutional

freedoms. To the contrary, our

mission is to reclaim our democratic

and individual freedoms from an

overreaching federal government.

The Framers of our Constitution

carefully limited the federal

government’s powers by specifically

enumerating those powers in

Article I, and the states promptly

ensured that the Constitution would

expressly protect the “right of the

people to keep and bear arms” by

adopting the Second Amendment.

But the Framers

u n d e r s t o o d

human nature,

and they

could foresee

a day when

the

federal

g o v e r n m e n t

would yield to the

“encroaching spirit of

power,” as James Madison

put in the Federalist Papers,

and would invade the sovereign

domain of the states and infringe the

rights of the citizens. The Framers

also knew that the states would be

powerless to remedy the federal

government’s encroachments if the

process of amending the Constitution

could be initiated only by Congress;

as Alexander Hamilton noted in

the Federalist Papers, “the national

government will always be disinclined

to yield up any portion of the authority”

it claims. So the Framers wisely

equipped the states with the means of

reclaiming their sovereign powers and

protecting the rights of their citizens,

even in the face of congressional

opposition. Article V vests the states

with unilateral power to convene for

the purpose of proposing constitutional

amendments and to control the

amending process from beginning

to end on all substantive matters.

The day foreseen by the Framers – the

day when the federal government far

exceeded the limits of its enumerated

powers – arrived many years ago. The

Framers took care in Article V to equip

the people, acting through their state

legislatures, with the power to put a

stop to it. It is high time they used it.

“The real threat to our constitutional rights today is posed not by

an Article V convention of the states, but by an out-of-control

federal government, exercising powers that it does not have and

abusing powers that it does.”

Support the only solution that is as big as the problem.

www.conventionofstates.com [email protected]

Sign the petition at conventionofstates.com

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Created:	2025-04-21 18:44 GMT
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