AskHistorians

In America, rights aren't "given", they are "respected". This is the same distinction made about the right-of-way while driving. Nobody ever has the right-of-way, but there are times when right-of-way must be yielded to others.

The US Constitution and its amendments declares all of the rights that the US Government must not infringe upon. Nothing declares what rights Americans have. [1] There is no external authority that "gives" Americans rights. They are inherent within us from birth. It is up to our systems of government to recognize and respect what has always been there.

The Second Amendment declares a right to self-defense that extends to defense against any threat including government agents. A modernizing of the 2A language would be, approximately - A free state is a critically important feature of civilization, therefore the people of that state possess the right to self-defense using the same level of technology as the state's agents.

The offensive use of arms is not a basic human right, but the defensive use is.

[1] The "privileges and immunities" clause of the 14th Amendment has a lot of interesting legal history around it. The main point of argument has been how broadly to read new rights into that phrase. Most reasonable people can observe that the ambiguity in that clause is likely to have been intentionally broad because of this "natural rights" interpretation that is embedded deeply within US law all over the place.