X-ing out the MX Forty years ago Wednesday, the church helped shoot down controversial plans to base a nuclear missile system in Utah’s West Desert. In a detailed, descriptive and impassioned 700-word statement issued May 5, 1981, the governing First Presidency decried the arms buildup, the destabilizing nature of the proposed MX deployment, and the impact the weapons plan could have on the environment, the economy and all of humanity. “By way of general observation, we repeat our warnings against the terrifying arms race in which the nations of the earth are presently engaged,” then-church President Spencer W. Kimball and his counselors wrote. “We deplore in particular the building of vast arsenals of nuclear weaponry.”