The right to bear arms is unalienable because it is an extension of a right that existed before government was ever conceived.
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Often the assertion is made that the 2nd Amendment is chiefly about maintaining the ability to overthrow a tyrannical government. While the founders did make this point when arguing for the preservation of the right to bear arms, the full reasoning for the adoption of the 2nd amendment is much more profound and approaches the truths of natural law in a fuller sense.
The right to bear arms is the constitutional enumeration of the inherent right to self-defense and the understanding that surrendering that right, and relying upon the government for sole protection, grants power to the government under which true liberty cannot exist.
A citizen disallowed a firearm, and faced with an assailant illegally armed, is at the mercy of the assailant and of the government which has not yet arrived to defend the helpless citizen.
The assailant can take away life and property at will, and the government, now the sole defender of life and property, can levy whatever requirements it sees fit for that defense because the citizen has nowhere else to turn. Freedom, fundamentally, is absent in this reality.
The right to bear arms, then, is unalienable because it is an extension of a right that existed before government was ever conceived. To say the right only exists to resist tyrannical government not only misses the foundations of the story, it grants a dangerous opening
An opponent to the 2nd amendment, when the 2nd amendment is divorced from natural law, only has to demonstrate that armed resistance is unreasonable and futile in order to destroy the argument for its existence.
We should understand the history of our own traditions to force our intellectual opponents to battle the weight of that history. It is not easy to dismiss or overcome natural law and natural rights.
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