Posted on 02/19/2008 7:35:11 PM PST by djf
Secy of State Brad Johnson of Montana delivered a letter to the Washington Times about possible outcomes of the Heller decision.
Second Amendment an individual right
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. Montana, the Second Amendment and D.C. v. Heller
Sidney? That's not too far away from Glendive. I have a friend and a cousin who used to live up there.
Rayon is actually a natural fiber. Just got a bum rap early on.
Not quite accurate. Please read the following essay I wrote that was vetted by our own "Congressman Billybob", a constitutional lawyer.
"A Convention for Proposing Amendments...as Part of This Constitution"
CBB: how can it be discovered if Montana pointed out this “contract” regarding individual gun rights to the USSC? Do you know if they did?
I really appreciate your comments, but it is just an old rumor that White Mtn. Peak, 14,242’, is actually higher than Mt. Whitney. It has been a running gag around here for years. It would take a lot of shoveling to get that much dirt and rocks off of White Mountain (pictured below) which is actually 70 miles north of Whitney in another mountain range.
14,496' Mt. Whitney in the High Sierra is not only the highest mountain in the West, but the highest in the United States outside of Alaska.
Missoula, Billings and Helena. Next question.
Alaska and Western Canada forming a new nation, perhaps, with Montana as a Southern jag.
The Third Revolution by Anthony F. Lewis
Quite a bit has changed since then. Or haven't you been paying attention.
See the links in post # 192, above.
Montana has two primary Minuteman support bases, Great Falls and Malmstrom AFBs. Their total number of Minuteman II Mmissiles is circa 350, less a few down for maintenance reefits, etc. There can be one, two or three Independent Reentry Vehicle [MIRV] warheads aboard each.
That should be big enough...”
Maybe we could break off Northern Colorado too.
Don't forget that similar rumblings have been heard in Alberta and Saskatchewan....
Got a passport, Yankee?
I'd just have him step out the back porch door, and point North. Though Devil's Tower sort of blocks a direct view.
It wouldn't be a secession. Should the any of the Bill of Rights be abrogated, the entire constitutional contract is negated, not just one little cherry-picked portion. Accordingly, Articles I,II,III, and IV would be just as moot as the Second Amendment, and there'd be nothing left to seceed from, just as the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991.
But as to how- and more importantly, why- it would *solve* the problem:
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. ... .
. ... Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
We'd love to have you back as a neighbor.
I've long noted that if you're going to get into a fight with someone, it's easier to win if he's distracted by having his pants set on fire early on in the dispute.
Oh, surely we can find a few new citizens ready to emigrate from their homeland who appreciate mountain conditions.
Of course, it'll help if we can find a few folks who can pick up their language to help them settle in to their new home: Tesro bisra yudha nepalbata suruu huncha....
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