The 9th Amendment to the Constitution for the united States of America is the one that is NEVER talked about in legal or political circles. It's the one [they] don't want you to think about.

It preserves ALL rights that ALREADY existed before the Constitution was created, with the only exception being those rights that were delegated to government by the Constitution.

The 2nd Amendment is about We the People fighting off enemies, foreign or domestic.

But the right to self-defense, gun ownership in general, and all the rest are in the 9th Amendment.

Remember: All of the Bill of Rights (first 10 amendments) are to LIMIT THE POWERS OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, and NOT to "create" any new rights of the people.

Most people do not know there even is a preamble to the Bill of Rights, much less have ever read it. Here is the Preamble:

The conventions of a number of the States having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added.

Catch that? RESTRICTIVE.

The Bill of Rights are ALL restrictive, as to what the federal government is NOT permitted to do.

The 1st: Congress shall make NO law ...

The 2nd: ... shall NOT be infringed.

The 3rd: NO quartering of soldiers ...

The 4th: ... shall NOT be violated ... (btw: "unreasonable" search or seizure means without a judge's signed warrant)

The 5th: NO person shall be held/compelled/etc. ...

The 6th: The government SHALL provide several protections to anyone accused of a crime.

The 7th: Anyone involved in a civil case SHALL have certain rights preserved.

The 8th: Excessive bail shall NOT ...

The 9th Amendment says that ALL rights of the People, that ALREADY existed BEFORE the government was created, were STILL IN EFFECT AFTER that government was created. Here is the 9th Amendment:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Get it? RETAINED.

Originally, Madison wrote 17 amendements, mostly modeled after George Mason's work on the Virginia Declaration of Rights. He scaled that down to 12. He did not omit anything, but merely rearranged them so that some of them were consolidated from two or three into one. The 5th, for example, has several restrictions of the federal government included within one amendment, rather than having them each in their own separate amendments.

The 12 amendments were presented to the States, and 10 were approved. The other 2 had to do with the number of representatives in the House, based on population, and congressional salary increases not taking effect until after the next legislative session. Those 2 did not pass. However, the one on salaries was given new life more than 200 years later, and was ultimately ratified in 1992, to become the 27th Amendment.

The 9th Amendment is KEY. It preserved ALL rights that humans had before the government was created.

https://constitution.org/1-Constitution/billofr_.htm

As the Declaration of Independence stated (which was written just 13 years earlier), certain truths are SELF-EVIDENT. Namely, that we have rights that existed BEFORE the government existed, and for which the government shall never be permitted to violate (inalienable/unalienable). And ...

... to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Government does not grant fundamental rights. Those rights existed before the government existed, and those rights were used to CREATE the government in the first place.

Once created, government CAN create "civil rights," which are rights that are really privileges, and can be regulated by their creator (the government). But the government cannot create civil rights that supercede natural/God-given rights, because those rights are inalienable/unalienable (untouchable).