"How a comma gave Americans the right to arms"

This is a classic ploy, arguing about punctuation or nuances of words when we have the records of the discussion surrounding the adoption of the Bill of Rights, and it is clear the right was an individual right. The slippery slope here is if "The People" only confers a collective right, does the right of the people to assemble exclude a lone protester?
Better yet, perhaps it only protects state assemblies and town meetings, this would prohibit Civil Rights marches and anti war protests.

I put whatever significance is indicated by the varying punctuation in the same category as those urban legends going around in the early 90's about how you would not be subject to the jurisdiction and power of the federal government if you did not use the zip code on your correspondence and in your papers, or that the power of a judge was somehow nullified if the flag in his courtroom had a gold fringe on it.
This is the argument of a fringe element that unfortunately has too much traction among the ignoratti, the people who know their own field but nothing of how the laws were formed or are structured so as to give them the liberty to pursue that field and prosper in it.

And how, exactly does the comma confer a collective power as opposed to an individual right?

And what is a collective right, anyway? Is that like a collective right to a meal from, say, a university cafeteria, where you don't have that right, but the student body does, so if they've already fed someone else you don't get to eat?

It's all about the commas. The gun grabbers will use anything they can to take away our right to own firearms.
Frank

The argument all along has been about the sense of the words when they were proposed and ratified. The punctuation thing is a red herring.

A point that I raise to no applause whatever before progressives (sometimes not even before conservatives) is that once you get beyond the sense in which the Constitution's ideas were ratified, you are talking about a faux Constitution on which the people did not together agree.

Now some disagree with what was decided before, but that will not, despite their wishful thinking, dissolve the former agreement. They will try harder. They will try something else. Bet on it.

As far as I know, there was no standard English grammar at the time or any other set of rules about punctuation. The punctuation throughtout the Constitution is rather arbitrary, indeed excessive, separating phrases where no separation is ncessary or useful. Today, you'd get marks off your English essay for doing it. Besides, lawyers still can't write -- or are intentionally disengenous and obtuse

The reason there are variations in the use of commas stems from the use of the document as a printed document or as a speaking/presentation device. Commas were/are added in order to place pauses in the speech so that those in the audience 1) may have time to write down the information in small pieces and 2) for the information to "sink in". Anyone who has been properly educated in speech making knows this point. Put a comma where you want to break. Then break as you reach the comma. Want a longer break, put in a period. So some copies that were read aloud have "extra" commas while those written by the audience or for printed publication do not.

Another option I have taught for the past 20 yrs is that there are three rights in the 2nd amendment. First that "a well regulated militia shall not be infringed." Second that the right to keep arms shall not be infringed. And third that the right to bear arms shall not be infringed. And thus the commas exist to separate the parts of a three part list.

A modern day translation (think translating Shakespeare) of the 2A should read (approximately):

Because a well equipped and proficient (=well regulated) military eligible citizenry (=militia) is necessary to keep a nation free, the right of the citizenry (excludes felons, etc) to own and carry weapons shall not be infringed.

Well regulated did not mean "subject to a lot of regulations" in the 1790s. Example: Jules Verne's well regulated clock in Around The World In 80 Days.

The left steadfastly refuses to get it.

The founders - from my reading of them - were of the opinion that the second amendment merely RECOGNIZED an individual's God-given, 'A Priori' right to self-defense.

The second amendment GRANTS nothing.

Another point: Most if not all, simply accept the term, State, to mean a body-politic or a geographical area. It is just as likely that the Framers were using the phrase "of a free State" to mean a free State of being as in being free. Thus Arms in the hands of the people keep them in a free state.

Nothing I've ever found restricts the phrase to body-politic or geographical area.

And Wolfington is correct: US v Cruikshank in 1875/6 contains dicta that the 2nd grants nothing but merely recognizes a preexisting Right. And of course, Rights come from God. If it comes from government it is a privilege or an immunity, not a Right.

The left steadfastly refuses to get it.
As a consequence, the left does such contortions as this to "strain at gnats and gorge on elephants", to refer to the actions of lawyers, among others.
As Frank Masotti said, "the gun grabbers will use anything they can to take away our right to own firearms."