Gun Control, Natural Rights, and Natural Law vs. Positivism

It is striking how much those who base their opposition to any further regulation of the sale and ownership of firearms (and production of them, for that matter) ultimately on the Second Amendment itself are the same people who in other contexts insist that our rights are inherent in us or bestowed upon us by God or nature and not given to us by government--that they exist prior to government.  In other words, those of this position maintain that ours are 'Natural Rights' and not merely positive ones, and that we enjoy them in accordance with 'Natural Law' (although this part is less often asserted explicitly, likely due to the fact that this concept and its theological connotations are more controversial than they once were).

It follows from this Natural Rights position that government action may indeed violate our rights just as much as that of any individual, and that governments have just as much of a moral duty to refrain from doing so as do private citizens.  This is opposed to the idea that governments cannot by definition violate our rights since, on this alternate view, what our rights are depend on the action of government to determine and define them.

This is of a piece with the rival accounts of law that are Natural Law Theory and Legal Positivism.  Of course, like with many other persistent disputes, this dispute is often described as being between different 'schools of thought' or 'theoretical traditions', and so each general overarching position has many different precise formulations; thus, articulating the specific disagreement can be complicated, and moreover it may even be the case that some iterations of each position are compatible.  But in general, Natural Law Theory holds that the concept of law has normative components--that a necessary condition of law is that it satisfy some ethical standard, and that there is a moral duty to obey the law--while Legal Positivism holds that law is a purely social phenomenon and is an entirely positive concept, devoid of normativity.

It's clear then that one cannot affirm the Natural Rights interpretation of our rights, including the right to keep and bear arms, and simultaneously ultimately ground their opposition to gun control in the existence of the Second Amendment, on pain of inconsistency.  The Second Amendment is positive law, and so is not necessarily in accordance with Natural Law.  Thus the right enshrined in the Second Amendment is not necessarily an accurate reflection of a Natural Right; simply stating what is currently the law and what is currently recognized as a right is not an argument for what the law and the right ought to be.

This simple but easily overlooked fact is obvious in light of the recognition that, in the policy debate over gun control, we are not asking what the law is but what it ought to be.