"Nowhere else in the Constitution does a 'right' attributed to 'the people' refer to anything other than an individual right."
— Justice Antonin Scalia on the 2nd Amendment
I agree with Justice Scalia. To drive the point home even more soundly, if it can be successfully argued that anyone of the rights protected in the first ten amendments is a "collective" right, then all of them are necessarily collective, not individual rights, because the language used throughout the Bill of Rights is consistent.
If the Founding Fathers intended the right to keep and bear arms to apply only to the militia, then they must've also intended for the free exercise of religion to apply only to those who are members of a church body, and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances applies only to people who do so as members of a group, not as individuals. Likewise, the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects should only apply to those who live in group homes. And the right to privacy? That only applies to groups also, so nobody has the right to undress alone — only in a crowd.
Does that sound ludicrous? It's no more ludicrous than the assertion that the right to keep and bear arms is a "collective" right. It is an individual right, one that we should never relinquish.
Very interesting argument. I certainly agree that the right to bear arms is understood to be an individual right in the Constitution.