The United States Constitution does not exist to grant you rights; those are inherent within you. Rather, it exists to frame a limited government so those natural rights can be exercised freely.

The right to keep and bear arms is such a right, yet the White House website states, “The Second Amendment gives citizens the right to bear arms.” The use of the word ‘gives’ instead of ‘protects’ is a subtle convolution on the Second Amendment that dictatorially implies that the government grants the right as a gift; one it could take away. Contrarily, the Second Amendment’s text recognizes the right as pre-existent, declaring only that it “shall not be infringed.” Like other freedoms including those in the Bill of Rights, that right was already there. It protects a right granted us by our Creator, as described in the Nation’s charter, The Declaration of Independence.

The Framers regarded those “certain unalienable Rights” to be man’s natural rights and independent of any particular religion or personal belief. They are fundamentally man’s right to his own life and “Liberty,” a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context. This liberty is often clarified as individual freedom.

Man’s natural rights are also known as inherent, non-negotiable, or inalienable rights but are more commonly called individual rights to avoid confusion from free government entitlements mistakenly called “rights.” The individual rights listed in the Bill of Rights are a few from countless others. How any managed inclusion in the Constitution is historically recounted:


“
Both James Madison and Alexander Hamilton expressed grave reservations about Thomas Jefferson’s, George Mason’s and others insistence that the Constitution be amended by the Bill of Rights. It wasn’t because they had little concern with liberty guarantees. Quite to the contrary they were concerned about the loss of liberties.

Alexander Hamilton expressed his concerns in Federalist Paper No. 84, “[B]ills of rights . . . are not only unnecessary in the proposed Constitution, but would even be dangerous.” Hamilton asks, “For why declare that things shall not be done [by Congress] which there is no power to do? Why, for instance, should it be said that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given [to Congress] by which restrictions may be imposed?” Hamilton’s argument was that Congress can only do what the Constitution specifically gives it authority to do. Powers not granted belong to the people and the states.

Alexander Hamilton added that a Bill of Rights would “contain various exceptions to powers not granted; and, on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more [powers] than were granted. . . . [it] would furnish, to men disposed to usurp, a plausible pretense for claiming that power.”

To mollify Alexander Hamilton’s fears about how a Bill of Rights might be used as a pretext to infringe on human rights, the Framers added the Ninth Amendment. The Ninth Amendment reads: “The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” Boiled down to its basics, the Ninth Amendment says it’s impossible to list all of our God-given or natural rights. Just because a right is not listed doesn’t mean it can be infringed upon or disparaged by the U.S.Congress.

”
— Walter E. Williams, Jun 2000


Though the Founders had a broad view of liberty, they also recognized the distinction between liberty and license. In other words, liberty is without the license to abuse the rights of others. An individual right is always limited by a social construct that defines it: free speech is “free” as long as it doesn’t create a victim. The same is so with the Second Amendment and endless number of rights not addressed in the Constitution. There’s no need for Congress to impose restrictions on freedoms already restricted implicitly to respect the rights of others.