The Bill of Rights does not enumerate human rights, it sets limits on what the government can do to those rights. If you read them, you will find "Congress shall make no law ... " and "shall not be infringed" and "shall not be violated" and so on.

It's a list of limits for the government.

Yes.

> "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." http://www.ushistory.org/Declaration/document/

Then the Bill of Rights enumerates them

edit: (not all of them, but important ones which are subject to abuse from the government).

Huh, I read it a different way

>A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed

Given the context of militia and state, I read it more as a right of local governments to keep the means of self defense, not necessarily a "human right."

Compare to the language in the UN Declaration on human rights:

>Everyone is entitled to ...

>All human beings...

>Everyone has the right to...

The difference being the second amendment is only viable within the context as an enumerated US law, whereas the UN Declaration of human rights enumerates rights that are inherent to existing as a human.

http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/

Your interpretation of militia is a common misconception but the framers were pretty clear what they meant by the militia.

>Rep. Tenche Coxe of Pennsylvania: “Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom. Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American… The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people.” – Tenche Coxe, The Pennsylvania Gazette, Feb. 20, 1788.

>Thomas Jefferson:“No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.”, Proposal for a Virginia Constitution, 1 T. Jefferson Papers, 334 (C.J. Boyd, Ed. 1950)

> George Mason: “I ask you sir, who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people.” (Elliott, Debates, 425-426)

https://www.quora.com/What-do-the-terms-%E2%80%98arms%E2%80%...

I believe it is a human right which comes necessarily from your right to self defense.

Even if overthrowing a government is impossible, making the police who enforce unjust laws hesitate before, lets say, rounding up millions of people for deportation, that's a good brake. You slow down the bad processes just long enough to survive until the next election, when all the combined reactance against the unjust government can flush it clean.

If the police have no fear and don't hesitate enough to prioritize what they enforce, they will stretch a tyrannical law to its conclusion.

I see it like this: If your state passes a law allowing ICE agents to come into schools and take kids with little to no justification, and having armed teachers can make them hesitate enough to only invade 3 schools instead of 4, that's a minor success. Just enough of a brake to spare one immigrant family long enough for Trump to be ousted.

> Given the context of militia and state, I read it more as a right of local governments to keep the means of self defense, not necessarily a "human right."

The second amendment is predicated both on the concept of a universal militia and (as is obliquely referenced in it's preamble) the concept that large standing armed military and/or internal security forces are institutions of tyranny: it is based on the idea that only by relying on the mass of the citizenry as the instrument of armed force can a state be free.

Yes is why the "National Guard" or its a equivalent where formed in a lot of the revolutions American, French, Haitian and the ones of the 48.

  Given the context of militia and state, I read it more as
  a right of local governments to keep the means of self
  defense, not necessarily a "human right."

You might enjoy listening to a podcast episode I heard a few months back; "More Perfect - The Gun Show" [1]

It taught me many fascinating things - like that before the 1960s the second amendment was interpreted differently; the right was was seen as only relating to militias, and the NRA was an organisation of sports enthusiasts, and their limited political activity was mostly pro-gun-control.

And one of the first groups to advance the ignore-the-bit-about-the-militia-its-just-an-example interpretation were the Black Panthers, who sought to reduce police brutality by having police patrols followed by armed groups of their activists.

[1] https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/radiolab-presents-more-per...

As someone (a progressive from the UK mind you) who has read a lot of parliamentary texts I tend to the view that it does mean that individuals have the right to own / bear arms.

Its a two part statement i.e. a well regulated militia is a good thing therefore ...

The Bill of Rights is not the Declaration of Independence, nor is it an enumeration of people's rights: it is a partial enumeration of restraints on government as they relate to national law. To say that it enumerates human rights is to suggest that human rights in America are finite. They are not. Absent specific legislation or careful court ruling, we the people are completely free to do anything, and our government to do nothing to interfere with that.

The bill of rights enumerates certain rights, very explicitly stating that it doesn't enumerate all rights.

Thank you. That is an important distinction. I think wikipedia defines it properly as "specific guarantees of personal freedoms and rights"

Yes, it was intended to capture human rights.

Before the Bill of Rights was ratified, the most convincing argument against them - to the people of the time - was the worry that the act of writing down the rights and putting them in the Constitution might give us (in the future) the mistaken impression that they were up for debate, that they were the only human rights, or that they weren't inherent to human nature.

From a legal sense, the human rights captured in the Bill of Rights are only enforced in the context of the US government because the constitution only applies to the US government. At the foundation of the country, there were a set of principles that applied across all of society, but the people designing the government were very worried about scope creep.