And what you are entirely missing in the philosphical basis for the constitution is the principle that we have natural rights that are independent of any govern

And what you are entirely missing in the philosphical basis for the constitution is the principle that we have natural rights that are independent of any government and that government is established in order to protect those rights, and that government cannot and does not grant those rights, which was the original argument about what we call the bill of rights. That by listing what rights the government was specifically not able to revoke (negative rights) the government would then think anything not listed would be ok for them to control. Which is not the case! In this case, the right to self defense is a natural right, what Locke called the first natural right, and the right to bear arms is simply an extension of that right. So you are the one ignoring the context of the argument and cherry picking. You are the one basing your argument on falsehoods and fallacies. Also, I consider the Declaration of Independence the real "original rules" (considery myself a declarationist), from which the constitution had authority to be made, so while the constitution did take heavily from the articles, it's not correct to say they are the original rules. The right to bear arms should never go away, and the people who call for it to haven't experienced enough of the world to know why it's timeless as an extension of the natural right to self defense. So you people arguing about what place the right to bear arms came in at is just a foolish exercise in self-masturbation that has no bearing on the issue at hand. Parent poster was basically just saying "it's damn important" and instead of addressing the meat of the argument it's turned into "no it was $placenumber"... The real problem is most Americans these days aren't taught these basic principles because of a lack or corruption of civics in education. For example, if you don't know what the difference is between negative rights and positive rights, then you didn't have a good civics education. I'm so tired of hearing people shit on the constitution and it's principles just because they think the current implimentation is imperfect, usually coupled with logically fallacious retorts about how it was written by slaveholding white property owners as if that negates all the real hard work that went into it. Madison studied just about every government known to man in preperation, including the native american systems of government. The scary thing is people don't realize how slippery the slopes are they clamor for.