The “natural rights” to life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, assembly, association, religion, arms, etc. are the closest we’ve come as a race to “absolute moral truth”.
If? No, that is how rights are defined in the US. As long as a right doesn't violate the right of another person. This is what makes the US unique. The US government doesn't give us rights, we already have them. The constitution grants limited powers to the government. That is why it wouldn't matter of the 2nd amendment disappeared, we already have the right to self-defense. The 2nd just called out that the fact government doesn't have the power to remove that right.
If the government moves to take guns away and kills people to do it. In other words, if they try to warp the meaning of our rights, then that is the another reason to be armed.
Not really. We've come up with that fiction because we believe -- and we're probably right -- that it gives us the best chance at living together peacefully and without interfering too much with each people's lives.
But it really is a fiction. I personally believe in what you call a person's natural rights, but that's all it is, just a belief. It takes all of us to band together and form structures to enforce and protect those rights for people to be able to enjoy them.
> The second amendment is about defense against a tyrannic government. You could take it away and I would still have a right to bear arms independent of the (theoretically) absent second amendment.
I mean, sure, if you define "right" in that way, then you can say you have the "right" to literally anything. If the 2nd Amendment were repealed, that imagined "natural right" won't help you much when the government comes and takes your guns away, or jails or kills you for having them when you try to fight back.
There is no absolute moral truth here. It's only what we've collectively decided on, and we still have a long way to go before everyone in the world is treated equally and with dignity. We look at the world 500 years ago and think of how uncivilized everything was, and how poorly people treated each other. In another 500 years they'll be saying the same about us, assuming we don't destroy ourselves before then.