When you say “stipulate”, do you mean “accept that they are natural Rights”? If so, then you are the one jumping the gun in this conversation. I am merely asking what others consider to be “Natural Rights”, and I do not feel that I should have to accept other people’s opinions about their list before the conversation can proceed. This is becoming uncomfortably akin to conversations I’ve had with certain religious practitioners who would refuse to get into details about what they believe unless I first professed a sincere belief in their faith. I accept that “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”-whatever that may mean to each individual that says it-is going to be on a lot of people’s lists because when you Google the term “Natural Rights” that phrase pops up most often. Care to give me a few more?
Perhaps this is getting to be a bit of a hijack?
Coming up with a exhaustive list of natural rights is potentially dangerous as someone will try to lawyer around them. They are those rights that are natural to our humanity and it is from those rights that people can legitimately form governments to protect and enhance those rights.
A government cannot legitimately exercise a power which has not been delegated to it by the people and the people cannot legitimately delegate a power that they do not themselves poses. To do otherwise would be tyranny.
For example we each have a right to self defense. Through this right delegated to the government Armies are assembled, police patrol, and any number of government services are created in order to enhance our self defense. However since I can not legitimately deprive you of your right to self defense government as well lacks that right. This is because the collective derive those rights from the individual and therefore does not gain any new rights just because they operate as a collective.
That’s another topic.
For this topic, consider
Also, a more detailed discussion:
“The Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms: The Common Law Tradition”
Perhaps you are correct, so I have started a new thread asking for people’s lists of their most important Natural Rights.
Interesting. It appears that the right to keep and bear arms has been the most disputed right in modern history. Something occasionally recognized by government, always clawed back at the first opportunity.
I think there are some more points raised here:
and the various circumstances behind it:
and then the drafting and compromises involved:
where one might realize that the framers were dealing with two separate issues, with the idea of even separating the right to bear arms in another amendment.
And finally, what happened to militias for the next few decades:
Thus, my understanding is that the framers valued individual liberties and wanted to minimize government, but at the same realized that with a weak standing army and undisciplined militias there was a possibility that the new republic would not be able to counter white rebels, Native Americans, slave riots, or European invaders. With that, they created what appears to be a sort of compromise: acknowledge the right to bear arms (which was practiced for decades before the Constitution was written) but use it to justify the need for a common defense (with regulation of militias explained in Art. 1 Sec. 8 and in more detail in the Militia Acts).