Written by Kevin   

Taking a Strict Constructionist’s view of the 2nd Amendment I offer proof herein that the individual has no Constitutional right to bear arms.
The 2nd Amendment reads: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

We all know the first half of the amendment is largely ignored or at least held as irrelevant to the second. OK.
For now, let us examine only the second half; "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed."
“The people” is a plural or collective noun defined in the dictionary as a “group of human beings”; as opposed to a singular noun like “person” or “individual”. The Framers were referring to a collective not an individual as regards the right to bear arms. This is easily proven by perusing the rest of the Constitution where one can see that "person" is the word the Authors used when referring to the individual; such as in the 5th Amendment. To wit: "No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime." There are ample other references distinguishing the individual or collective.
If the FFs wanted to indicate the right to bear arms was an individual's right they might have said: "The right of ....a person... to bear arms shall not be infringed.”....or some-such. But they didn’t. I think for good sound reasons.
Nowhere in the 2nd Amendment does it say "person" or refer to an individual at all, and as a Strict Constructionist I believe that is how it should be interpreted and that the present interpretation (ironically by Strict Constructionists on the US Supreme Court) is flawed and should be reconsidered.

Further proof of my contention lies in the first half of the amendment, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State”.
It is absurd to ignore this part as the general rule of the English language is the first half of a sentence is dominant over the second and at the very least the two are inextricably related. Note also that the first half of the 2nd Amendment could not stand on its own as a sentence in a grammatical sense. I properly incorporate it as did the Framers who I believe were pretty good at writing English.

Again, as with “people”, “militia” is a collective noun. Militia could not possibly mean an individual. My conclusion is that the Framers meant for arms to be controlled by "the people" in a regulated militia because that is exactly what they said.
Moreover a militia is an organized and armed fighting force of local people led by their own officers. Who owned the cannon of local militia? The militia. Even today’s gun-rights advocates don't contend that individuals may own “arms” such as tanks, fighter jets, nuclear weapons and surface-to-air missiles.

Therefore my conclusion is that unless the Founding Fathers were a bunch of semi-literate idiots who didn't know what they wanted to say, the right to bear arms is clearly the right of “the people” in an organized militia…not the individual. That is what they actually said and they said so with careful precision and true intention.