when the framers wrote … they weren’t talking about AR-15s

When the framers wrote, civilian ownership of artillery, and even of warships, was commonplace.

When Jefferson wrote:

Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law,’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.

He wasn’t talking about legal rights.

Or, as Alexander Hamilton wrote:

“The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written as with a sunbeam in the whole volume of human nature by the hand of Divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.”

Our understanding of our rights is as imperfect as is our understanding of our nature, but neither our rights nor our nature change, as we gain in understanding or lose it in the pursuit of popular delusion.

Ain’t that right, pragmatists?

And the biggest threat to that human right is the same organization and folks it always was: the government.

We don’t get a new freedom of the press every time a new model of offset printer comes out, and we didn’t get a new freedom of the press when blogs started, either.

We didn’t get a new freedom to bear arms every time a new gun game out. We always had it.

And for what it’s worth, I didn’t find the comment I linked to be one that took sides in the debate, which is why I liked/linked it.

It clearly did, though. Any truly neutral comparison of gay marriage vs. guns has to take into account the fact that one alleged right is in the Constitution while the other is not.

Same faults as most claims of hypocrisy, though; it’s very easy to claim such things when you don’t understand your opponent’s position, and usually such a standpoint really only makes it clear how little your understand the entire argument or even your own position.

[I should note, once again, that I'm more or less ambivalent about 2A; I can't be fairly described as either a "proponent" or an "opponent," and have issues with the argumentative tactics used by both sides. I just thought that since semantic arguments and 2A arguments have a tendency to devolve into pissing contests in record time, the merger of the two would be particularly futile. Which, as it turns out, I was right about.

And for what it's worth, I didn't find the comment I linked to be one that took sides in the debate, which is why I liked/linked it.]

Xrlq nailed it to the wall. There’s no more to be said about it.

I think it would be more properly phrased a “New Protection” of an “Old Right”.

Both points of view are defensible. The only laughable thing is the sort of inconsistency which I suspect many gun enthusiasts (and many gay-rights activists) to be guilty of: the inconsistency which says “MY right was always there and the courts finally acknowledged it; YOUR right was recently just made up by activist judges.”

This faux equivalency conveniently overlooks the oh-so-minor point that the written constitution actually says something about “people” having a “right” to keep and bear “arms,” while it says jack-spit about gay marriage. Nice try, though.

i agree that rights often require protection (even regulation, to keep one person’s rights from infringing another), but this doesn’t seem compatible with the notion of laws as giving rights or of courts as granting rights when interpreting the law. and if you want to speak of laws explicitly protecting rights, then the meaning of “the right of the people [...] shall not be infringed” suddenly seems painfully clear. clearer and more stark, even, than i think i would like it to be.

The problem is that some rights actually do require protection, insofar as governments are not the only ones who can infringe upon your rights.

It’s not so much that rights are granted by the constitution; it’s more that they’re granted explicit protection. Which, again, is part of the reason for the 9A.