Fred Thompson wrote an article on the right to bear arms and various findings by the UN Human Rights Commission that deny the right of an individual to self-defense and urge states to comply with their small arms guidelines. That's polite speak for gun control that would make current Washington D.C. laws look like an NRA fantasy. Anyway, Thompson, to put it succinctly, was against such thing. Of course several journalist criticized him, saying he made stuff up and the UN didn't say those things and whatever, but various bloggers found plenty of evidence to support everything Thompson said. Plus the guy quoted Grotius, a 17th century philosopher that I had heard of, but knew nothing about.

And what does Wikipedia say about Mr. Grotius? Well he wrote De jure belli ac pacis libri tres (On the Laws of War and Peace), among other things, and his ideas were the foundation of international law, which, up to that point, meant "might makes right." Some might say it's still like that, and in a way, they are right. But it seems what Grotius did was create a framework for relations between states which hopefully precludes "might makes right" situations from occurring. The main thing he came up with is that self-defense is a right, though I am currently not clear whether he was referring to the rights of individuals or of states, and that obviously makes a big difference.

The UN specifically states a right to self-defense... For states. Someone even found a little bit written by a UN lawyer where she says they have found no legal evidence that self-defense should be considered a right for individuals. Here are some relevant links:

Grotius
A summary of everything with links to more