Reply #7: The 2nd amendment GIVES nothing just like the 1st amendment gives nothing.

[Statistical]

Is basic civics no longer taught?

The philosophy of the founding fathers is that there are "certain unalienable rights". If you are religious you could say they are "God given rights". If you are not you could say they are human or natural rights. The point is the rights pre-exist the Constitution. Man can't give what isn't his to give. Think about it for a second. If someone gives you something it isn't a right. It was theirs to give (or take back). At best it is a privilege. You have no protection, no guarantee. Maybe you get the privelege, but maybe you piss off the person granting it and lose it, or maybe you children lose it, or your entire line. A century prior to the revolution that was the standard political philosophy. God granted all power, rights, and authority to the King. The King is Supreme and Sovereign. Anything he grants is just that a privilege.

The Bill of Rights grants NOTHING. The Bill of Rights simply is a set of restrictions on the government for the protection of rights that already exist. The reason for breaking with England is that England transgressed those rights and in doing so lost the legitimacy of rule. This is one of the elements that made the revolution so "radical" & "progressive" for its time. It codified the concept that rights came neither from King nor man (governments) but were unalienable. They couldn't be given or taken away. How could the king take what wasn't his to begin with?

They said so in plain English when they wrote the reason for breaking the political bounds with King George:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."