Natural Rights, Self-Defense, and the Right to Own Firearms https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2018/10/42765/
It is simpler to think about who has authority and who, or what, does not. Individuals each have the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We the people formed a government to secure those rights and delegated to it certain powers. Our natural rights are unalienable. That is we can delegate powers to secure them, but we cannot transfer the rights themselves. Nor are they additive. That is many people may not add their rights together to trump the rights of the feew.
Because we retain the rights and government’s only role is to secure them, governments have no jurisdiction or authority over the keeping and bearing of arms, or speech, or religion, or a whole host of other activities. Put simply, we have all the rights and governments have only the powers we delegate to them. If each of us does not have the right to keep and bear arms, the government doesn’t either.