You know the old joke, it's easier to fool someone than convince them they've been fooled? Along with a former state chief justice, and an Eagle Scout scholar, I was co-founder of a national group that has championed the Article V Convention for over a decade. Due to AmmoWorld weighing in on the issue, if you've made up your mind about a "constitutional convention" please allow an explanation on how we've been fooled.
The dudes who spent summer 1787 together didn't trust each other, slave owners and those against, all in the same room. They knew what they were framing would need additions as the future beckoned. The fifth article is the legal instructions on how to make those additions, and notes from Philly show they specifically wrote that law so the national government and state governments were precluded from any power over it. They didn't want future politicians deciding whether living people were allowed to formally discuss the collective situation.
Any time you assemble people into a convention eventually it adjourns because the majority of delegates want to go home. When a convention adjourns it displays the difference between Propose and Ratify. Delegates returning to their families, nothing will have changed legally, and everything we have now still in exactly the same place. It's not what Anti-Conventionists imply and contend--characterizing a convention as a single, monumental risk, when in actuality/reality, it's a two-step process based on common sense. If you have a problem, you have to be able to talk about it--and after you talk about it, a way to see if enough people would approve for adoption. 75%+ approval nationwide equates to roughly 80/100 Americans saying Yes to something. Balk at the suggestion we could ever agree on anything, but national polls for decades show Americans right and left want private money out of public elections. Convention delegates won't be there attempting to reinvent the wheel, but to put forward proposals the Congress never will. That's why the convention exists, a rudimentary mechanism for suggesting we do things differently when things get bad. There have been thousands of suggestions over the last 200 years, but only 27 answered. Proposing something and ratifying something are two different things. Anti-Conventionists, believing (or getting other Americans to believe) a convention will both propose and ratify, is an obstruction of justice.
Nuts and bolts: Article V is a single sentence long and bases a convention call on 2/3rds of states applying. That requirement has been met many times over. The chief justice and Eagle Scout scholar created the first-ever database of PDFs from congressional records, showing hundreds of applications from the states, and one session of Congress after another pretending unawares of its current obligation to issue the call forthwith.
Some talking heads contend that state applications for a convention ought to be for the same subject, or ought to be cast in roughly the same decade, in order to be considered valid, but there is nothing in Article V stating such. The call is based on an objective numeric count. Why? So politicians can't delay and argue against a convention.
Some talking heads contend that states have rescinded previous applications, making them null and void. The framers did not want state governments to have any power over the convention, so arguments about language in an application, other than having been cast, are just lawyer tricks to delay and prevent a convention. Since the Constitution is for us, and the convention too--any arguments against it are against republican form of government and an act of corruption.
Do you want the Constitution to save us? If Ammoworld and gun owners said Yes to the Article V Convention, we'd win one, and in a natural progression of events get delivered from the current situation--and without having to fire a shot. The objective solution is right there in the Constitution, all we need is a tipping-point who believe it's time to obey it.
