Do You Own a Gun?

[lumberjim]

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The term inalienable rights (or unalienable rights) refers to a set of human rights that are in some sense fundamental, are not awarded by human power, and cannot be surrendered. They are by definition, rights retained by the people. Inalienable rights may be defined as natural rights or human rights, but natural rights are not required by definition to be inalienable.

An alternative argument claims that the idea of inalienable rights is derived from the freeborn rights claimed by the Englishman John Lilburne in his conflict with both the monarchy of King Charles I and the military dictatorship of the republic governed by Oliver Cromwell. Lilburne (known as Freeborn John) defined freeborn rights as being rights that every human being is born with, as opposed to rights bestowed by government or by human law.
Civil rights and civil liberties are different. Civil rights are given to the people by the government. Civil liberties are god-given rights.

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

Criticism

The concept of inalienable rights was criticized by Jeremy Bentham and Edmund Burke as groundless. Bentham and Burke, writing in the eighteenth century, claimed that rights arise from the actions of government, or evolve from tradition, and that neither of these can provide anything inalienable. (See Bentham's "Critique of the Doctrine of Inalienable, Natural Rights", and Burke's "Reflections on the Revolution in France"). Keeping with shift in thinking in the 19th century, Bentham famously dismissed the idea of natural rights as "nonsense on stilts".

here's the thing: while governments have the power to recognize and uphold our rights, or to take them from us....WE hold the power to uphold or overthrow the government.

this make the rights natural, and not bestowable. get it?