Sloth, I don't think those two statements are contradictory...I agree that the second amendment does both.
HLL, I would suggest that the individual right and practicality are contradictory. If the government is to determine what is allowed and what is not, it is by permission, not by right.
Declaration of Independece:
"are endowed by their creator by inaliable rights"
Meaning that free people are BORN with rights, natural rights not given by government, but are a birthright from God (nature,creator)
What the Bill of Rights does is also write down certain of these rights that come from being born a free human.
The second amendment says that the security of a free state is dependent upon the right of a person to own and carry arms, it was understood that this right of arms is one that someone is born with, not a right granted by government, and that this right the free states are dependent upon for their very security, that a free state can call upon its free citizens to muster as an armed militia. A militia is not paid, and does not have government issued weapons. The National Guard is not a militia.
OUR BIRTHRIGHT AS A FREE PEOPLE COMES FROM A HIGHER POWER THAN GOVERNMENT, AND OUR GOVERNMENT DOES NOT GRANT US RIGHTS, THEY ARE OURS.
The phrase "under God" in the pledge of allegiance is a reference also to this legal concept of our nation being under the "natural law" where people possess rights and those rights are not grants from government to be seized at will. When governments seek to sieze natural rights from free people, they tyrannical and should be opposed by free people, this was the belief of the founders of this nation.
Realize that the attempt to take out "under God" is an attack upon the legal framework that rights are not granted by government. What the ulimate aim of these rights confiscators is, 1. eliminate natural rights 2. proclaim rights come from government grants 3. take away those government granted rights.
Fight with all you have to take on the movement to ruin our pledge, our rights. We are ultimately fighting for our birthright as a free people.
The "collective right" argument is a touchy subject among gun owners, because the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has recently used it to come to the conclusion that there is NO individual right to arms.
One thing that you need to understand in order to see the contradiction is the principle under the US Constitution that individual citizens have "rights" and government has "powers."
In addition, when the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, or any subsequent amendments mean to refer to states, they use that word, and when they mean to refer to individual citizens, they use the word "people." The term "State" or "States" does not appear in the Second Amendment.
Also, what empowered states to form and maintain militias was not the Second Amendment, but rather Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, to wit:
The Congress shall have power ... To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
It also helps to understand that in contemporary usage, the term "well regulated" commonly meant "properly functioning," in the same sense that "regulating" a rifle is adjusting its sights so that the bullet hits the point of aim, or in the sense that a "well-regulated" clock keeps accurate time.
And there's the simple logical inconsistency of the concept of a so-called "collective" right - how can a group of people have rights that an individual member of that group does not have, when the framers of the Declaration of Independence stated that rights are derived from God and cannot be taken away, and that just governments are established to protect those rights?
And finally, 10 USC 311 indicates that I am, and you probably are, a member of the unorganized branch of the Militia of the United States by virtue of our gender and age, whether we like it or not. But if I had obtained an M-16 machine gun that is standard issue to American infantry, I would have been subject to felony charges in California.