The original framework for the amendment was so that state militias could protect from the overreaching federal government, but now has come to represent the right of Americans to protect themselves- from an overreaching government, from other citizens, from foreign nationals who are deemed threat-worthy.
The original framework clearly intended the 2nd Amendment (w.r.t.: the People) to be exercised by individuals. The “collective right” theories you are trying to apply to the 2nd Amendment only originated in the very late 1800’s and only enjoyed middling popularity among legal scholars for a handful of decades.
Now though, this amendment is being referenced to and used for arguments concerning semiautomatic and automatic weapons where full magazines can be replaced in seconds, and are far more accurate. Opponents of gun regulation like to cite Justice Scalia in that the Second Amendment should be looked at with an originalist jurisprudence (when arguing cases using the second amendment, it should be evaluated based on when the amendment was created) and thus argue that no regulations need be put on these high-tech, new-age weapons made for killing or maiming large groups of people. But if we are to make decisions based on what the found farmers intended, then a review and revision needs to be made to the amendment (maybe all the amendments) because there is no way the founding fathers could have predicted the scientific advancements that we often take for granted and which have an assumed presence in our lives.
This is a common and rather uneducated argument made by those favoring gun-control legislation. What other Amendments need to be revised based on technological advancement? Did the framers foresee the advent of the Internet and pocket-sized devices that can access global information and communications networks when they drafted the 1st Amendment? Of course not. Fortunately the US Supreme Court addressed this in Caetano v. Massachusetts recently:
It is settled that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms that applies against both the Federal Government and the States. District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U. S. 570 (2008); McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U. S. 742 (2010). That right vindicates the “basic right” of “individual self-defense.” Id., at 767; see Heller, supra, at 599, 628. Caetano’s encounter with her violent ex-boyfriend illustrates the connection between those fundamental rights: By arming herself, Caetano was able to protect against a physical threat that restraining orders had proved useless to prevent. And, commendably, she did so by using a weapon that posed little, if any, danger of permanently harming either herself or the father of her children.
Under Massachusetts law, however, Caetano’s mere possession of the stun gun that may have saved her life made her a criminal. See Mass. Gen. Laws, ch. 140, §131J (2014). When police later discovered the weapon, she was arrested, tried, and convicted. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court affirmed the conviction, holding that a stun gun “is not the type of weapon that is eligible for Second Amendment protection” because it was “not in common use at the time of [the Second Amendment’s] enactment.” 470 Mass., at 781, 26 N. E. 3d, at 693.
This reasoning defies our decision in Heller, which rejected as “bordering on the frivolous” the argument “that only those arms in existence in the 18th century are protected by the Second Amendment.” 554 U. S., at 582. The decision below also does a grave disservice to vulnerable individuals like Caetano who must defend themselves because the State will not.
