The American Thinker By Steve McCann 4/3/2018
To what extent does man have a natural or God-given right to self-preservation and protection of his property? This question has been bandied about for thousands of years, and that issue, not guns (which are an instrument of self-preservation), is at the heart of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution.
The United States is the only nation in the annals of mankind to be established on the basis of a political and social philosophy centered on natural, or God-given, rights. Among these are self-preservation and property. Property rights are the bedrock of the American political system; without that foundation, there is no freedom. The Founders held that property rights encompass not just physical property, but also one's life, labor, speech, and livelihood, as individuals own their own lives; therefore, they must own the products of those lives, which can be traded in free exchange with others. Further, as there is a natural right of self-preservation, man has the right and duty to defend himself against transgressors, including the state, who would deny, abrogate, or unlawfully seize his property.
However, over the past 150 years, the statists, including the current iteration of the American left, have marched in lockstep to what Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels espoused in their Communist Manifesto: "The Theory of Communism may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property." They contended that one's labor or livelihood (and by extension, one's life) is not private property and is thus subordinate to the common good as determined by the state. Therefore, the individual has no God-given and unconstrained right of self-defense, as that right can be utilized to counter or oppose the common good.
More:
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/04/the_natural_right_of_selfpreservation_and_the_second_amendment.html
