I find it fascinating that people seriously argue that the Framers spent whole amendment on essentially saying "the state army must be able to have guns, and the state can not infringe this right!". What thought process could lead to an idea that the state would want to ban its own army from having guns and to prevent this, we need a constitutional amendment? The whole concept only makes sense if we're talking about right that can be - and potentially may be - infringed by the state, so treating it as it is concerning any state function literally makes no sense to me. How is it supposed to work?
That’s precisely how the 2nd Amendment was interpreted by the courts until the 2000s. Namely, that its purpose was to prevent the Federal government from disarming and disbanding state militias.
A personal right to own weapons is a very recent interpretation, originally advocated by a small group of activists a few decades ago, and then gaining momentum with the growing power of the pro-gun movement, who claimed it as a central justification for their agenda. It was finally settled as the law of the land by the US Supreme Court 5–4 (Scalia, Thomas, Alito, Roberts, and Kennedy in the majority) in the DC v. Heller case in 2008.
However, a shift in the Court (if e.g. Scalia or Kennedy resigned and was replaced by a Hillary Clinton appointee) could easily throw the details of this interpretation back into question.
I find it somehow hard to believe that it was universally believed to be personal right only by recent activists, as many state constitutions explicitly treat it as personal right[1].
If people writing those constitutions didn't believe such personal right exists and is important, why would they write so?
There are known examples of prominent lawyers supporting such understanding in 19th century. [2]
It is also hard to believe if you read historical reviews about various gun laws in 19th century [3], where while the public carry of guns was often restricted, nobody doubted the right of people to actually own them, and nobody referred to "collective right" as the reason.
I can appreciate the difference in approaches, but the claim that "individual rights" approach did not exist until recently - and not as a crazy idea in minds of a small bunch of "activists", but as widely recognized and adopted concept - seems to contradict all evidence.
NRA was founded in 1871, not exactly "a few decades ago", but "individual rights" interpretation existed and was widely accepted way before that.
