porphyrogenitusI think that’s true, but I also think it is important to reject the false progressive narrative (is there a single example of progressive historiography that is not tendentious or mendacious?) when it comes to the true background and meaning of the second amendment, and the right it enshrines (again; it does not create that right, it enshrines it. So, for example, judicially reinterpreting it, or negating the 2nd amendment “democratically” or even constitutionally repealing it through the constitutional amendment process does not negate or change anything: it just means that this right joins many, many, many others that are not respected by the statists). A more polemical exposition here.
So the answer is that both the second and the tenth amendment protect them, but even if both amendments are repealled or ignored, it doesn’t matter: rights aren’t defined by what others or the state are willing to respect (thus the non-natural-rights/constructivist position fails); they can only either respect/protect pre-existing rights (and they cannot create new ones, such as a “right” to force others to pay for your birth control. Sorry, Sandy – that involves not “recognizing new rights,” but a rationale for violating real ones), or they can infringe and violate them by refusing to acknowledge and protect them.
Now, some legitimate libertarians are pacifists, who do not own guns and do not want “society” to be armed. But that is not the same thing as saying no one has a right to such arms, and it is certainly not the same thing as saying “the state should disarm the people, so that only the agents of government have weapons, because we know that’s the way to keep us all safe.”
Finally, it’s interesting that the very people (progressives) who think that every yahoo, even illiterate, disinterested, disengaged, uninformed ones (er “low-information voters” AKA “Obama’s New Base”) should be encouraged to have input into policy, into deciding how to run everyone else’s lives for them, cannot be trusted with weapons.
Well, they’re trusting these very same people with the most deadly force imaginable, by allowing them to determine whose finger will be on atomic buttons (or drone buttons, and the like).