Natural rights refers to rights that an individual enters into society with that governments are not supposed to deny. They do not generally apply to animals.
Break it down like this: All laws, constitutional or otherwise created by governments either proscribe or prohibits some social behavior. A prohibition is also a proscription to all others to have the legal right NOT to do something. In essence, all laws are rights such as those which we proscribe in a constitution. The only difference is the ease for which those laws can be changed, if at all. So this implies that we are not "supposed to" deny any law. This includes the government considering they are part of the same democratic population. So governments, too, are not supposed to
deny any law. What distinguishes your absolute "right" then from merely obeying the law at any given time?
It's only your active obedience that suggests that you are "right". And any behavior to the contrary is "wrong". If these rights and wrongs are determined by people alone, then these claims are just arbitrary conventions and do not belong to some external universal force of nature, like the laws of matter and energy. So there is nothing "natural" about them.
Also, how do you figure that a gun is a means for personal "defense"? Shouldn't you be investing in bulletproof vests instead? In fact, without having to check, I'm pretty certain that the sales of bulletproof vests are somewhat insignificant to those of guns.
How would bulletproof vests allow a person to defend themself? And that's assuming the vest even stopped the bullet and the person wasn't shot in the face or the leg or something.
Take a shield and a spear....are you honestly going to tell me that the spear is the defensive tool and the shield is some superfluous useless piece of decoration? Did armies of the past believe that the spears serve to defend the armies from the unruly civilization?
Regarding about restructuring it, that is in reference to those who say that the Constitution as a whole is outdated and needs to be re-written to bring it "up-to-date." I was pointing out that the Constitution covers basic timeless principles. You can update it here and there via the amendment process, but trying to bring it "up-to-date" specifically regarding modern issues will result in a Constitution that is outdated within a few decades or shorter. And it is not a futile exercise to amend the Constitution, as it has been done multiple times before.
Then I guess then the "timeless" amendments that are more than a
few hundred years old are
really outdated then, wouldn't you agree?
Regarding multiple interpretations problem:
And where does your authority come from to be the wiser? What assures you that anybody who interprets it different than you, must not "know anything about it"? And in respect to scholarly controversy, you seem to believe that everyone is on the same side of all issues which is very naive. ...
Because the people who "interpret it differently" usually show a complete lack of knowledge of the other arguments on the issue. And I never said that everyone is on the same side of all issues.
And how would you propose to solve this? The voting population only has to require being over 18 years of age. There's no educational prerequisite. Do you propose discounting those ill informed people the vote? Do you propose just ignoring those other people's interpretations when it comes to deciding to create a law? Or do you think that it might be wiser to negotiate an improved law that everyone can understand equally?
If you can't come up with a precise formula to determine the good from the bad, every gauge of estimation is useless and an insufficient reason to just allow people arbitrary powers to decide when it is right to assert a bad government and a right to overthrow it.
It isn't useless or insufficient. But it can be a bit arbitrary.
And this arbitrary nature of people to be correct at assessing their authority at knowing when a government is bad for everyone else is a wise reason to assure that they have the capability to overthrow them? ...thus requiring that they need to have the right to be able to stockpile the weapons to do so?