Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

To the Editor:

In “Justice Breyer’s Sharp Aim” (Op-Ed, Dec. 22), Pauline Maier offers an excellent critique of the assault on our Constitution by five conservative justices of the Supreme Court as they distort the meaning of the Second Amendment. As Ms. Maier notes, the Second Amendment affirms the right of “people” to keep and bear arms in a well-regulated militia—or the National Guard today.

The word “people” is used in the preamble and in the Second Amendment to describe collective rights. Certainly, the preamble does not convey an “individual” right to establish a Constitution. The Fifth Amendment makes clear the distinction between collective and individual rights by referring to the rights of each “person.”

Do these conservative justices not uphold the intent of our Constitution because they lack familiarity with the grammatical rules of the English language?

Thanks to Ms. Maier and Justice Stephen G. Breyer for their efforts to preserve our Constitution from activist justices who would distort it for political purposes.

Bert O. Richmond
Athens, Ga., Dec. 22, 2010

Note from KBJ: The letter writer should peruse other provisions of the Constitution. The First Amendment refers to "the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Is that a collective right? The Fourth Amendment refers to "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures." Is that a collective right? It's the letter writer, and not "five conservative justices of the Supreme Court," who is distorting the meaning of the Second Amendment "for political purposes."

Note 2 from KBJ: The letter writer could also use a dictionary. According to my Oxford American Dictionary and Language Guide (1999), the word "people," when used as a noun, means either "persons composing a community, tribe, race, nation, etc." or "a group of persons of a usu. specified kind." The first is the distributive use; the second is the collective use. By selectively citing the Preamble and the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, while ignoring the First and Fourth Amendments, he makes it seem as though the Framers never used the word "people" in the distributive sense. How's that for distortion "for political purposes"?