Would Montana Secede?

posted by Alan Greenblatt

With the Supreme Court ready to hear a gun rights case for the first time in decades, Brad Johnson, Montana's secretary of state, sends a letter to the Washington Times suggesting that the terms of entry of his state into the union will be violated if the Court rules the wrong way:

Although Heller is about the constitutionality of the D.C. handgun ban, the court's decision will have an impact far beyond the District.

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. [...]

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.

Comments

[Gned the Gnome]

I'm glad that Montana at least has more guts than the average American. If the Supreme Court rules that 2A or RKBA is only a collective rather than individual right, or rules (incorrectly again) that the Constitution grants rights rather than recognizes rights that individuals already inherently have (not all of which are spelled out in the Bill of Rights), then it will have not only violated its Compact with Montana, the Court (and its Justices ruling that way) will have violated their oaths to support and protect the Constitution, and therefore they will have disqualified themselves from continuing in office or serving in any other office of trust in the US, and they may even have committed treason.

If all acts of the Court, Congress, and the Presidents in US history were adequately reviewed under this standard, I think it likely that we'd find that the legitimate government established by America's founders ceased to exist by the 1860's if not sooner, and that the current government is not legitimate but in effect the result of a gradual, illegal coup d'etat, and its laws are null and void and unenforceable.

Gned the Gnome, Founder
10th Amendment Association

[Charles Copeland (Missoula, Montana)]

Just a correction: the 1889 Montana State Constitution is a null and void document. It was criticized for years as being a carbon-copy of other state constitutions- with the exception of sections that were advantageous to large-scale mining and cattle interests.
A second convention was called in 1972, and the Constitution ratified then is now the current acting legal document.
None of this matters in the consideration of the gun rights argument, however, because both the 1889 and 1972 Constitutions make identical endorsements of gun ownership as an individual right. I'm just tired of seeing the 1889 Constitution cited in all these stories, when it hasn't been anything more than a historical document for almost 36 years now.

[Karl Larsen]

I'm moving to Montana - even if I have to bus tables.

[BILLY BOB]

GOD BLESS MONTANA, AND GOD BLESS AMERICA!