Hey, everyone who'd pissed off about the worldwide Jihad needs to read this. This is the way we think about guns here in America. Don't let your governments tell you to think any other way.
From Punditarian at Astute Bloggers:
The Second Amendment doesn't "give" anybody any rights at all. The purpose of the United States Constitution is not to "give" individuals or groups any rights, but to compel the Federal government, and thereby State and local governments, to recognize and respect the rights that individuals already have.
Here's what the Second Amendment says:
A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the
right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
The Second Amendment, like the rest of the Constitution, presupposes that people already have
rights, and does not presume to grant or define those rights. It merely notes that the right "to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."So where did that right come from? This is what another of our founding documents has to say about that:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that
they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among
these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these
rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from
the consent of the governed.
The right of self-defense is an obvious extension of the right to life, and it is a basic and eternal endowment of mankind.The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution acknowledge the supremacy of Natural Law.
No man-made government, no matter how "democratic," can promulgate any law which would deprive human beings of the rights with which their Creator endowed them.
This open acknowledgment of the supremacy of our God-given rights is the surest guarantee of our freedoms.
The Second Amendment does NOT "give" individuals the right to bear arms. God gave us that right. The Second Amendment explicitly forces our government to respect the right that God gave.
Your government did not give you your rights. If they did, then the government can also take them away.
What the government can take away is not a right.
Rights exist before the government. They are truths which are self-evident.
Any government that tries to take away your rights needs to be taken away.
Here's another passage from the Declaration of Independence:
... 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 ...