BLUF
To a casual observer in the early 21st century it might seem that the “militia-uses-only” view of the Second Amendment had always been predominant, and the Heller and McDonald decisions involved dramatic legal change. In full historical context, however, it becomes apparent that those decisions recognize the individual rights understanding that had prevailed from the Framing onward. The militia-uses-only approach rejected in Heller and McDonald was in fact a very recent creation of the lower federal courts, utterly ahistoric, and which had been subject to scholarly challenge almost from its outset.

The Rise and Demise of the Collective Right Interpretation of the Second Amendment