QotD: A Constitutional understanding

John Stossel, investigative reporter for ABC's 20/20, did an excellent piece on the Right to Bear Arms (here). A small excerpt from that article highlights a right understanding of our Constitution, and specifically, in this case, the Bill of Rights:

The Bill of Rights did not create rights. It acknowledged them...It shouldn't have been necessary to remind the four Supreme Court dissenters of what Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence:

"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. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..."

The Framers of the Second Amendment did not say, "The people shall have the right to keep and bear arms." They wrote, "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

He caps off his article with:

The victims of gun crimes are easy to count. What cannot be counted are the lives saved because would-be victims were armed.

Touche'.