Montana’s Secretary of State, Brad Johnson, send a letter to the Washington Times, in response to a previous Op-Ed in that paper, stating that if the United State Supreme Court rules in the upcoming District of Columbia vs. Heller case, that the Second Amendment is a state’s collective right to own guns and not an individual’s, the United States will be in violation of the contract signed when Montana became a state. Here’s a copy of the letter:
The U.S. Supreme Court will soon decide D.C. v. Heller, the first case in more than 60 years in which the court will confront the meaning of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Although Heller is about the constitutionality of the D.C. handgun ban, the court’s decision will have an impact far beyond the District (“Promises breached,” Op-Ed, Thursday).
The court must decide in Heller whether the Second Amendment secures a right for individuals to keep and bear arms or merely grants states the power to arm their militias, the National Guard. This latter view is called the “collective rights” theory.
A collective rights decision by the court would violate the contract by which Montana entered into statehood, called the Compact With the United States and archived at Article I of the Montana Constitution. When Montana and the United States entered into this bilateral contract in 1889, the U.S. approved the right to bear arms in the Montana Constitution, guaranteeing the right of “any person” to bear arms, clearly an individual right.
There was no assertion in 1889 that the Second Amendment was susceptible to a collective rights interpretation, and the parties to the contract understood the Second Amendment to be consistent with the declared Montana constitutional right of “any person” to bear arms.
As a bedrock principle of law, a contract must be honored so as to give effect to the intent of the contracting parties. A collective rights decision by the court in Heller would invoke an era of unilaterally revisable contracts by violating the statehood contract between the United States and Montana, and many other states.
Numerous Montana lawmakers have concurred in a resolution raising this contract-violation issue. It’s posted at progunleaders.org. The United States would do well to keep its contractual promise to the states that the Second Amendment secures an individual right now as it did upon execution of the statehood contract.
BRAD JOHNSON
Montana secretary of state
Helena, Mont.
The letter refers to Article I of the Montana Constitution. Here’s a link to that, as well as the actual wording of the right in question.
Section 12. Right to bear arms. The right of any person to keep or bear arms in defense of his own home, person, and property, or in aid of the civil power when thereto legally summoned, shall not be called in question, but nothing herein contained shall be held to permit the carrying of concealed weapons.
Next month, the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear the appeals case of District of Columbia versus Heller, more commonly known as the D.C. Gun Ban Case. A lower court, last year in a ruling, declared Washington, D.C.’s ban on handguns and restrictions on all guns unconstitutional. A ruling from SCOTUS could come as early as June.
For more information and articles on District of Columbia vs. Heller, follow this link.
Tom Remington
