Is Gun Ownership a Right?

[stanc]

If you don’t care what the founders believed, you have no business living under the US Constitution. It is the supreme law of theses United States.

Under the Constitution, the Founders denied women the right to vote.
Under the Constitution, many of the Founders -- including such notables as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson -- practiced slavery, denying the majority of the black population any rights at all.

The US Constitution went into effect 1789 and one needs to consider the states constitutions at that time as they preceded the US Constitution. For example, I am from PA and as of 1776 our preamble reads “WE, the people of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, grateful to Almighty God for the blessings of civil and religious liberty, and humbly invoking His guidance, do ordain and establish this Constitution.”
Declaration of rights #13 reads:
XIII. That the people have a right to bear arms for the defense of themselves and the state; and as standing armies in the time of peace are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; And that the military should be kept under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.
You will find most states and commonwealths read similarly. To think that ANY state would accept less than that from a union of states, or come up with some other form of treasonous thought is ludicrous. Feel free to read all state constitutions.

1. Most of the State constitutions which pre-dated the Second Amendment did not affirm the people had a right to bear arms to defend themselves. They only said that people had the right to bear arms for defense of the State.

North Carolina (1776) "...the people have a right to bear arms, for the defence of the State..."
Pennsylvania (1776) "...the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and the state..."
Virginia (1776) "...a well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defence of a free state..."
Vermont (1777) "...the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and the State..."
Massachusetts (1780) "The people have a right to keep and to bear arms for the common defence."

2. Insofar as thinking that "ANY state would accept less than that from a union of states" is ludicrous, note that every State (including Pennsylvania) accepted both the creation of a large standing army, and the demise of the original State militia system established by the Founders.