States do not have rights; they have powers. Only individuals have rights. To construe that such a thing as a "collective right" even exists is intellectually dishonest at best, downright evil at worst.
No your missunderstand. (also off topic but the SCOTUS just ruled the corperations have rights to, but thats for another thread)
One school of thought is that the 2nd ammendment refered to the states rights to raise and keep millitias. As a result the individual would need to be able to bear arms of a military nature, since back than hunting rifles were simply a given. I always love how the lefties argue that military weapons should be banned and hunting rifles are OK, really its the other way around if you follow this argument. Hunting rifles are not protected.
The Supreme court in older cases thought along these lines. I forget the case off the top of my head, but it was about an individuals right to own a sawed off shotgun. The court came down against it because a sawed off shotgun has no military value and is not in use with the armed services. They rulled that weapons that are not of a "like kind" to contemporary military rifles are not protected. So your AR15 or Ak47 would be protected, your .22LR would not be.
Personaly I come down on the states rights argument because I think that was closer to what the founding fathers intended the 2nd ammendment to be used for. It wasn't to protect the lone guys rights to own a Glock 17 and carry it in federal parks, or even to defend himself in a crappy area of Chicago; it was ment to protect a lot of citizens rights to own military type weapons and form militias. The 2nd ammendment was designed as an enforcement tool for the other ammendments if voting failed. You have to understand the thinking of the time, and if you read the memoirs of the people alive than it becomes quite clear. They really viewed the US as something like the Europeans viewed the EU oh probably 15 years ago. If you were from CT you hated people from NY that was another country, and people from Virginia?! So they were very concerned with the rights of the states, more so than their collective rights. Its very similer to say France or Germany not wanting to yeild power to the EU.
A lot of people didn't know where these new "United States" thing was going so they wanted their own states to maintain a lot of power so they could pull out of the contract using military force if needed. This school of thought lasted until the Civil War when Lincoln enforced the contract. I find it fascinating because if you look at this country up until WW2 we always kept a VERY small and underfunded military, because of the commen distrust for the government. Just recently after WW2 have we gotten into this military industrial complex thing and love a massive standing force. But thats a very recent development in this country.
Its really quite interesting, the cases are online I recomend skimming through them.