Editor:
The controversy of the Second Amendment continues to flourish in Montezuma County and across the nation. Those who argue for no control whatsoever, dismissing themilitia clause that governs the following clause, find comforting support in the 2008 Supreme Court decision that rules in favor of the keep and bear arms portion. This is the court with the same five Republican-appointed justices who recently gave us the 5-4 decision conferring personhood on corporations, a decision whose impact has already radically corrupted this years election and will continue to contaminate future elections. It waits on a wise Supreme Court or a constitutional amendment to overturn this terrible decision.
But the Roberts court is not the only one to render decisions that have blunted for some time the realization of our democratic ideals. The infamous Dred Scott decision of the Taney Court (1857), confirming that slaves were property and had none of the rights of citizens, is one. Another is Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), ruling that separate but equal is constitutional. This decision allowed Jim Crow to legally continue until the Warren Court overturned it in Brown v. Board of Education (1954).
The militia clause of the Second Amendment reflects the Founders concern that as a weak, infant nation, the United States still presented a temptation to the colonial ambitions of France, Spain and even England. Thus, maintaining militias was a necessity, as was a standing army. No one today can know the fullness of the Founders thought, and removing their statements from the historical context that informed them is not helpful. But wise as these men were, they could not have imagined todays arsenal of weapons. But they certainly were too wise to believe that such weapons would be appropriate as a common possession of the citizenry. Knowing that the future would bring changing conditions, the Founders provided the legal mechanism of amendments to the Constitution to address these changes. In our own time, we should be framing our laws to deal with the conditions affecting the health, safety and welfare of our people, not those of the eighteenth century.
Denton May
Cortez
