The right to keep and bear arms is not something we as Americans possess because of government benevolence, but something with which our Creator endowed us. The right is one of many natural rights our Creator wove into the fabric of our humanity, and to be denied the exercise of that right is to be denied the full expression of our humanness. This was common knowledge among our Founding Fathers, as they sourced our rights in Him who transcends and supersedes manmade government.
Thomas Jefferson could not have been clearer on the source of our rights than when he wrote, “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.” Those were Jefferson’s words in the Declaration of Independence, and they provided a general framework which was fleshed out by James Madison and others via the Bill of Rights to the U.S.
Constitution. In other words, Jefferson made a general declaration of our having been endowed with “unalienable Rights” and Madison, with the Second Amendment, took the clarifying step by identifying and hedging in one of those rights as the right to keep and bear arms. (Other amendments in the Bill of Rights identified and hedged in freedoms of speech and religion, of assembly, the pursuit and sanctity of private property, and the freedom to be secure in our persons and houses, among other things.
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