There Should Not Be Stricter Gun Control Laws - Statement Of Larry Mcdonald (d-ga), House Of Representatives, Before The Subcommittee On Crime, House Committee On The Judiciary, July 21, 1975

They are not rights which are granted to us by the federal government, but rights with which the Constitution forbids the federal government to interfere.

Thus the Second Amendment does not "grant" the right to keep and bear arms, but protects it from usurpation. Note that the amendment doesn't say this right may not be abolished. It goes farther. It says it may not even be infringed. That is, this right is so important it may not be tampered with, or trespassed upon, or transgressed, or chiseled away by any method or means Washington might devise. The Constitution is unequivocal on this point.

Allegedly, in order to control the acts of our criminal minority, the gun-controllers demand that tens of millions of law-abiding Americans be restricted, harassed, and eventually deprived of their constitutional right as well as their legal property. In defiance of all logic, such guncontrollers express a far greater fear of those tens of millions of Americans who are not criminals than they do of the hoodlums actively terrorizing our cities. The reason is that their attitudes and opinions are not the product of logic but of ideology.