Neither Liberty Nor Safety: The False Bargain of Amendment 4

August 2026 Ballot | Missouri Constitutional Amendment 4

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
— Benjamin Franklin, 1755

Franklin's warning is 271 years old, and Missouri is about to test it. Amendment 4, on your August 4th ballot, is a bargain in exactly the shape Franklin described: surrender an essential liberty — the people's power to amend their own Constitution — in exchange for a promise of safety from out-of-state money and radical amendments. We intend to show you that the liberty being surrendered is real and irreplaceable, and the safety being promised is an illusion. Take this deal, and Missouri ends up with neither.

The People's Two Checks on Government

Ron Calzone has spent three decades at the Missouri Capitol as an unpaid citizen watchdog. He founded Missouri First, architected the Second Amendment Preservation Act, and now funds constitutional lawsuits against the legislature through the Article III Institute. Nobody in Missouri has stronger conservative, limited-government credentials. And in a recent interview on the Robb Carter Show, he laid out a framework every Missourian should sit with before August 4th.

The people hold two ultimate checks on government power. The first is the right to keep and bear arms — the final guarantee that government answers to the people and not the other way around. The second is the initiative petition: the power, reserved by the people to themselves in Article III, Section 49 of the Missouri Constitution, to amend their own governing document without asking the legislature's permission.

A constitution, as Calzone puts it, is a fence around government — shackles on power. And you don't shackle someone and then hand them the key. The people have to hold the key. The initiative petition is the key.

Here's why that framing matters. Conservatives understand instinctively that some people abuse firearms — and that this abuse is never a justification for confiscation. We don't surrender an essential check on government because someone, somewhere, misused it. We prosecute the abuse and jealously guard the right.

The initiative petition process has been abused too. Out-of-state money has pushed amendments into our Constitution that many of us opposed with everything we had. That abuse is real, and it deserves a real response. But Amendment 4 is not a response to abuse. It is confiscation. It takes the check itself away — not from the billionaires, who will simply redirect their money to Jefferson City lobbyists, but from you.

And here's the part that should give every gun owner pause: of the people's two checks on government, the initiative petition is the one that has actually been used. Missourians have never needed to raise arms against their government. But they have used the initiative petition to impose term limits on that government. To pass the Hancock Amendment restraining its taxing power. To cap sales taxes. The IP process isn't the theoretical check. It's the working one. And Amendment 4 is aimed straight at it.

The "Safety" Is an Illusion — Three Doors Left Wide Open

Now examine what Missourians are being offered in exchange. Safety from out-of-state billionaires. Safety from radical amendments imposed by urban voters. Protection for our Constitution. It sounds valuable — until you check whether the product actually exists.

Door number one: the legislature's path stays wide open. Amendment 4's district-by-district requirement applies only to amendments proposed by initiative petition. Amendments referred by the General Assembly still pass with a simple statewide majority — 50% plus one, exactly as today. If Democrats ever control the legislature — and Missouri had Democratic legislative control within living memory — every item on the proponents' fear list can be referred to the ballot with a simple majority vote and ratified the same way. Gun restrictions. Expanded abortion language. All of it. Amendment 4 does not close that door. It doesn't even touch it.

Door number two: the constitutional convention stays wide open. This is the loophole almost nobody is talking about, and Calzone is right to raise the alarm. Under Article XII of the Missouri Constitution, a constitutional convention can propose amendments — or an entirely new constitution — and the convention's proposals pass with a simple statewide majority. Amendment 4's own text confirms its 8-of-8 district requirement applies only to measures "proposed by initiative petition." A convention could rewrite the entire Missouri Constitution, and the very urban majorities that Amendment 4's supporters warn about could ratify that new constitution with 50% plus one. If the concern is truly "Kansas City and St. Louis deciding for everyone," Amendment 4 leaves that possibility fully intact — twice over.

Door number three: the foreign money is already banned. Senate Bill 152, signed by Governor Kehoe in July 2025 and effective August 28, 2025, already prohibits foreign funding of Missouri ballot measure campaigns — with certification requirements and pass-through protections that are actually broader than Amendment 4's provision. The Governor said it himself when he signed it: this legislation ensures Missourians, not foreign interests, determine our policies. The sponsor said it closes the loopholes "once and for all." That safety was already purchased, at no cost to anyone's liberty, a year before Amendment 4 reached your ballot.

So tally it up. The dangers Amendment 4 claims to protect you from remain fully available through the legislative path and the convention path, and the foreign money threat was already addressed by ordinary legislation. What, exactly, is the safety being purchased here? There isn't any. The only thing Amendment 4 actually accomplishes is the confiscation of the people's key.

The "Protection" Actually Hands the Cities a Veto

And now the crowning irony — the point that turns the proponents' own argument inside out.

Their case rests on a fear: that Kansas City and St. Louis can impose their will on the rest of the state. Under the current system, there is truth in that concern — a measure can pass on the strength of heavy urban turnout even when most counties vote no. We have never denied it. It's why we support real reform.

But look at what Amendment 4 does with that concern. By requiring a majority in every one of the eight congressional districts, it doesn't remove the cities' power over the rest of the state — it guarantees it. Under Amendment 4, the district anchored by Kansas City can single-handedly veto any amendment the rest of Missouri wants. So can the district anchored by St. Louis. Forever, and by constitutional design.

Run the numbers to see how extreme this is. An amendment could win 90% of the vote in seven of the eight congressional districts — near-total consensus across rural, suburban, and small-town Missouri — and then fall short of a majority by a single vote in the eighth district. Under Amendment 4, that amendment fails. Seven landslides and one coin-flip loss, and the will of an overwhelming statewide supermajority is nullified by the narrowest possible margin in one district.

Today, Kansas City and St. Louis can outvote the rest of the state only when the rest of the state is divided or stays home. Under Amendment 4, either one of them can block the rest of the state even when Missouri is more united than it has ever been on anything. The proponents aren't taking power away from the urban districts. They are writing an urban veto into the Constitution — and calling it protection for rural voters.

Is this much better? It is not better at all. It trades occasional urban influence for permanent urban veto power — and permanent veto power for every other district too, over everyone else. That's not consensus government. That's a constitution nobody can ever use.

The Ones Warning About Out-of-State Money Are Funded By It

One more detail from Calzone's interview deserves its own paragraph. The same voices warning that out-of-state money corrupts the initiative petition process are, in the same breath, promoting Amendment 5 — whose campaign funding comes largely from out of state. The principle apparently isn't "out-of-state money is corrupting." The principle is "out-of-state money is corrupting when it funds things we oppose." That's not a principle. That's a team jersey.

Nine Days, Zero Seconds of Senate Debate

If Amendment 4's supporters believed this bargain could survive scrutiny, they would have welcomed scrutiny. Look at what they did instead.

HJR 3 — the resolution that became Amendment 4 — was introduced in a special session on September 3rd, 2025, and was delivered to the Secretary of State on September 12th. Nine days, start to finish, for a permanent change to how Missouri's Constitution can be amended. It received exactly two committee hearings, each held the same day as the committee's vote. And on the Senate floor — the chamber that calls itself the most deliberative body in Missouri — it received not one second of debate. Leadership invoked the "previous question" motion, the Senate's nuclear option, to cut off discussion and force the vote.

Sit with that. The people pushing Amendment 4 tell us the legislative process is trustworthy precisely because it is deliberative — hearings, debate, amendments, the slow grind of representative scrutiny. Then they passed Amendment 4 through a process with none of those things. They tell us not to worry about a future Democratic legislature abusing the referral path, because the Senate filibuster would stop any radical amendment. Amendment 4 itself is the proof that it won't: when leadership wanted this passed, the filibuster lasted exactly as long as leadership allowed it to — which was not one second.

Every assurance offered about the safety of the legislature-controlled path was disproven by the passage of Amendment 4 itself. The bill is its own counterargument.

They Took a Fair Idea and Gutted the Fairness

Here is the fact that settles any remaining doubt about what Amendment 4 really is. The concurrent-majority concept — requiring geographic consensus to amend the Constitution — didn't originate with Amendment 4's authors. Calzone says he introduced the concept at the Capitol, working with Representative Bill Kidd on a 2022 resolution. And that original version had two features Amendment 4's authors deliberately stripped out.

First, it applied to every constitutional amendment — proposed by initiative petition, by the legislature, or by a constitutional convention. One standard, all paths, no exceptions. Second, its threshold was achievable: a majority of Missouri's 163 State House districts. Demanding, geographically broad, protective of rural voters — but possible. A genuinely popular amendment could still pass. A genuinely narrow one could not.

That is what real constitutional amendment reform looks like, and it is precisely the reform Act for Missouri supports: harder for everyone, impossible for no one, equal for all. The legislature had that model in front of them. They took the concurrent-majority idea, changed the threshold from "achievable majority of house districts" to "unanimous consent of all eight congressional districts," and — this is the tell — exempted themselves entirely.

When you take a reform designed to bind everyone equally and rewrite it so it binds only the people, you have revealed your purpose. This was never about protecting the Constitution. It was about who holds the key.

Franklin's Test

Return to Franklin's warning and apply it like a checklist.

Is the safety real? No. The legislative path is untouched. The convention path is untouched. The foreign money is already banned by statute. The promised protection does not exist.

Essential liberty, surrendered. Temporary safety, illusory. Franklin told us what people who take this bargain deserve — and what they receive. Missouri does not have to be his next example.

Our Position: We Oppose Amendment 4

Act for Missouri believes it should be harder to amend our State Constitution — for the people, for the legislature, and for any convention, equally. That reform existed. The legislature rejected it in favor of a version that removes the people's check while preserving every path they control.

Do not trade your key to the fence for a lock that only works on you.

Act for Missouri is a volunteer-led, principled conservative civic organization. We believe in principle over party. For our full analysis of Amendment 4, see Amendment 4 Isn't Reform — It's a Power Grab Watch Ron Calzone's full interview on the Robb Carter Show. To learn more about who we are, visit our About page.