> This is untrue, and the Supreme Court has ruled several times on it.
This is a pretty weak appeal to authority. My rejoinders are Dred Scott and Korematsu (or anything about the idiotic "right to contract"). The Court isn't always right.
> or realize that the Bill of Rights was added at the states request to protect individual rights, not collective govt sanctioned rights
Well, 9A protects individual rights not enumerated, but 10A protects State rights not enumerated. States were entirely consumed with their own rights; that's why we've had to apply the Bill of Rights to States via incorporation & 14A.
> Or read the Federalist Papers
Madison does talk about the right to bear arms in the Federalist Papers [1]. But he was talking explicitly about States vs. the Federal government. He also later saw how bad militias were at being an army (a point Washington argued over and over again) in the War of 1812 and changed his position in favor of a strong, standing, Federal army. Let's pull some quotes here (emphasis added):
> The only refuge left for those who prophesy the downfall of the State governments is the visionary supposition that the federal government may previously accumulate a military force for the projects of ambition.
> That the people and the States should, for a sufficient period of time, elect an uninterrupted succession of men ready to betray both...
> that the governments and the people of the States should silently and patiently behold the gathering storm...
> Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger.
> To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence.
> Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of.
> Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. And it is not certain, that with this aid alone they would not be able to shake off their yokes. But were the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will and direct the national force, and of officers appointed out of the militia, by these governments, and attached both to them and to the militia, it may be affirmed with the greatest assurance, that the throne of every tyranny in Europe would be speedily overturned in spite of the legions which surround it.
First, Madison repeatedly emphasizes local and State governments as a key component of repelling tyranny. But he also exclusively conceives of such resistance solely through the local and State militias.
2A is absolutely not about individual rights. No Founder ever talked about it in this way. It's about militias.
[1]: http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/beararms/FEDERALI.HTM