You Don’t Have “2nd Amendment Rights.” You Just Have Rights.
Millions of people today refer to their rights by amendment number, as if they get them from the Bill of Rights. They talk about their “2nd Amendment rights,” but they have it completely backwards.
The founders didn’t write the words as a permission slip for the people. They aren’t a “gun permit.” They are a restraining order for government: hands off our natural rights.
SHALL NOT
There is no clearer restraining order than the 2nd Amendment. It doesn’t grant a right. It recognizes one that already exists, and issues a direct command to government.
“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.”
Not one founder believed the right to keep and bear arms depended on a piece of paper. None of them ever said, “We gotta ratify this amendment so our 2nd Amendment rights are protected!”
Those views would’ve been laughed out of the room, or worse. And they should be today.
The Founders understood a basic truth that eludes most people today. Rights don’t come from governments or pieces of paper. As John Dickinson explained, they are a gift from our Creator.
“They are not annexed to us by parchments and seals. They are created in us by the decrees of Providence, which establish the laws of our nature.”
These gifts – our natural rights – aren’t just ideas on paper. They are a core part of our humanity.
“They are born with us; exist with us; and cannot be taken from us by any human power, without taking our lives.”
Apply that to the right to keep and bear arms. Even when government violates your rights, they don’t cease to exist. The real issue, as James Otis, Jr. made clear, is whether you choose to tolerate the violations.
“So long as people will submit to arbitrary measures, so long will they find masters.”
FIRST LAW
The founders didn’t see the right to keep and bear arms as an afterthought. It’s built on our right of self defense, which as Samuel Adams made clear, is essential for defending all our other natural rights.
“Among the natural rights of the Colonists are these: First, a right to life; Secondly, to liberty; Thirdly, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can.”
Adams said this was just common sense. The rights to life, liberty, and property mean nothing in practice if you can’t defend them. Without self-defense, you are left at the mercy of whoever holds power over you.
“These are evident branches of, rather than deductions from, the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature.”
After the Constitution was ratified, Roger Sherman took this to the logical conclusion. During a 1790 debate on the House floor, he made it clear that the right to keep and bear arms also includes a right to use them.
“It is the privilege of every citizen, and one of his most essential rights, to bear arms, and to resist every attack upon his liberty or property, by whomsoever made.”
Sherman made that argument a full year before the 2nd Amendment was ratified. When the ink finally dried, he didn’t suddenly start calling it a “2nd Amendment right.” And neither should we.
Go back even further to early 1788. Tench Coxe didn’t just defend this as a natural right. He explained that it specifically includes military weapons.
“Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birth-right of an American.”
Coxe left no wiggle room. This natural right of self-defense has no limits at all.
“The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people.”
This American view of rights completely rejected the British system. Even the English Bill of Rights made it crystal clear that keeping and bearing arms was never seen as a right, it was only allowed as far as the government decided to permit.
“That the subjects which are Protestants may have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law.”
St. George Tucker compared the two systems directly. In Britain, the people may have arms, and only if government permits it by law. In America? Unrestricted. An unlimited natural right.
“The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed … and this without any qualification as to their condition or degree, as is the case in the British government.”
NO RESTRICTIONS
In his 1791 “Lectures on Law,” Supreme Court Justice James Wilson explained that the duty of government is to protect, defend, and even expand the exercise of natural rights.
“I here close my examination into those natural rights, which, in my humble opinion, it is the business of civil government to protect, and not to subvert, and the exercise of which it is the duty of civil government to enlarge, and not to restrain.”
Wilson recognized a fundamental truth. There are situations when, even if it wanted to, government could never swoop in just in time to protect you. In those moments of zero protection, the natural right to defend yourself doesn’t vanish. It still exists in its fullest extent.
“I go farther; and now proceed to show, that in peculiar instances, in which those rights can receive neither protection nor reparation from civil government, they are, notwithstanding its institution, entitled still to that defence, and to those methods of recovery, which are justified and demanded in a state of nature.”
Like Samuel Adams, Wilson tied self-defense directly to life, liberty, and property. He made it clear this natural right has absolutely no limits. And he declared this more than a year before the words “shall not be infringed” were even ratified.
“The defence of one’s self, justly called the primary law of nature, is not, nor can it be abrogated by any regulation of municipal law.”
Wilson didn’t pull this idea out of thin air. In his footnotes, he reached all the way back to Cicero in 52 BC and the ancient maxim of inter arma silent leges. The rule is absolute: when life and liberty are at stake, there are no legal restrictions.
“For laws are silent when arms are raised, and do not expect themselves to be waited for, when he who waits will have to suffer an undeserved penalty before he can exact a merited punishment.”
And, as Wilson made clear, this right isn’t limited to defending just yourself.
“This principle of defence is not confined merely to the person; it extends to the liberty and the property of a man: it is not confined merely to his own person; it extends to the persons of all those, to whom he bears a peculiar relation—of his wife, of his parent, of his child, of his master, of his servant.”
Wilson didn’t stop there. He said the right of self defense is ultimately about protecting everyone’s liberty – even against your own government.
“Nay, it extends to the person of every one, who is in danger; perhaps, to the liberty of every one, whose liberty is unjustly and forcibly attacked. It becomes humanity as well as justice.”
THE PALLADIUM
That foundation leads to one undeniable conclusion. As St. George Tucker wrote, self-defense is the right you use to defend all the others.
“This may be considered as the true palladium of liberty. … The right of self defense is the first law of nature”
Politicians understand this perfectly. Because self-defense is the ultimate check on their power, governments relentlessly work to restrict this right as much as they can get away with.
“In most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible.”
Restricting that right is just step one. Add militarized enforcement to the mix, and Tucker warned you have the ultimate recipe for total tyranny.
“Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.”
Calling your natural right of self defense your “2nd Amendment rights” is a trap. Doing so gives the government the political cover to do exactly what Tucker warned about. They just twist the words “shall not be infringed,” and claim they are protecting your rights “within the limits of the law.”
The result? That’s the exact same thing as the British system the founders fought a long, bloody war to secede from.
That’s why your skin should crawl anytime you hear someone say “the 2nd Amendment is my gun permit!” They’ve got it totally backwards.
The 2nd Amendment isn’t your gun permit.
You are.
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