As America emerges from its 250th anniversary, it is worth recalling what made the American experiment exceptional in the first place. The formula was never especially complicated: Our rights come from God, not government; all people possess those rights equally; government is legitimate only by the consent of the governed; and each generation bears a duty to preserve that inheritance for the next. That is the promise of the Declaration of Independence, and it does not grow stale with age.That is why the Second Amendment cannot be treated as some temporary indulgence that may be revoked whenever political winds shift. If the right to keep and bear arms is nothing more than a favor extended by those in power, then the central claim of the Declaration has already been abandoned. When a right survives only as long as the current majority allows it, it stops being a right and turns into a privilege.Too many people in public life speak as though constitutional rights somehow expire when technology advances. Yet nobody argues that the freedoms of speech or religion ceased to apply once the country entered the digital age, or that they became obsolete because Americans now communicate online.