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).
2/2:
Make up your mind. You are contradicting yourself. You used the word "war" in a hyperbolic way, then claimed you did not mean it that way (was the wrong context), and now you say you did use it for "extreme precision," making your entire position clear as mud.
Precision would be nice.
And you JUST SAID ...
Fuck, you are just giving me a headache.
Earlier, you said that if someone tried to take your apple, it would be ... "AN ACT OF WAR."
That is just ridiculous and stupid, which is WHY I said it was hyperbolic.
As I pointed out (and you ignored), it was not established that it even WAS your apple.
As I also pointed out (and you ignored), you seemed to be equating the fact that BECAUSE you held the apple ("food" is what you said) in your hand, it NECESSARILY WAS YOURS. I gave an example of where that MIGHT not be true.
But you ignored all that.
The reason I wrote all that was to point out that claiming the theft of food was an "ACT OF WAR" is hyperbolic. I stand by that statement.
Irrelevant, because possessing an apple (or "food") is NOT a God-given right. I prefer the term "fundamental right" because (a) it implies it was a right that was NOT granted by other men, and (b) it includes all who believe whatever they believe about God. This is why Jefferson wrote, "... Nature and Nature's God."
But I understand your use of "God-Given" and I do not disagree. But THOSE types of rights do NOT apply to SPECIFIC PROPERTY.
Maybe this is one of our fundamental disagreements.
These "fundamental rights" (aka "God-given rights," aka "natural rights," aka "rights that exist at nature," aka "rights inherent to being a human") are GENERAL PRINCIPLES, and NOT about SPECIFIC things.
They are ABSTRACTS and not CONCRETES.
Your possession of the apple is real. You DO possess it. But that does not mean you have a RIGHT to possess it. You MIGHT have a right to possess it, but you ALSO might NOT. That would have to be determined with knowing more about the situation.
Someone ELSE might actually hold that right, and YOU are the one who violated it.
If your concept of natural rights is "finders, keepers," then we are back to "law of the jungle," which I reject (for what should be obvious reasons -- especially in this example).
I do not believe that calling out non-critical thinking is an attack on you, personally. I consider it an attack on method of thinking.
However ...
To be honest, based on conversations we have had in the past, and how we seem to be butting heads so much in this one ... I think it is probably best to end the conversation here.
If we were sitting down face-to-face, I think it would be productive, enlightening, and enjoyable. You might even convince me to adjust my thinking.
But this format is just too difficult to really hash things out, and has already taken too much time.
Maybe the next one will be more productive.
Best wishes.
^ I just thought of one more thing, not to debate further, but just to think about.
Let's take "the law of gravity."
We use the word "law" to describe it, but it is not the same concept as a law of man.
It would be more accurate to say "the force of gravity."
These "laws of nature" are not really laws or rules in the same sense that we think of laws and rules made by man. They are not really even laws or rules made by God.
They are merely our observation of how the world works, and specifically the forces of nature.
Maybe that is what I am objecting to when the term "Natural Law" is used to really mean the "forces of nature."
CAN someone punch someone for no reason? Sure, there is no force of nature stopping it.
But what if we don't want society to be a place where this is accepted as a routine thing? The vast majority of people would be constantly in peril, and we don't want that due to how we think people SHOULD engage with each other in society.
Humans have learned to co-exist without doing these things ... for the most part.
Why?
Because we prefer it that way.
And THIS is where we get into a discussion about the human concept of "rights."
Rights are not a force of nature. There really is no "law of nature" in the same sense that there are man-made laws to deal with the man-made concept of rights.
These are really two different concepts.
Maybe that is my true objection to this whole thing.
But we could only find agreement if we were discussing this in person, probably over a few drinks.