Eugene Volokh's comment that, in the 1980's, the /''/conventional wisdom/''/ was that the 2nd Amendment conferred a collective right was ridiculous.

Until Heller, there has never been a decision from the Supreme Court addressing the issue of whether the 2nd Amendment was a collective or an individual right. Many people cite US vs. Miller as a precedent, but the Miller case was about a particular type of gun, not about collective or individual rights.

As for /''/conventional wisdom,/''/ it was the position of every presidential administration until Nixon that the 2nd Amendment conferred an individual right to keep and bear arms. Given Nixon's paranoia, it's not surprising that his administration would change nearly two centuries of precedent on the right to keep and bear arms.

Before talking about /''/conventional wisdom,/''/ perhaps Eugene Volokh should look at the writings of Laurence Tribe, Alan Dershowitz and other liberal-leaning constitutional scholars who have closely examined the 2nd Amendment and arrived at the conclusion that it does indeed confer an individual right. Tribe wrote that it pained him to come to his individual rights conclusion, but that it was the only correct conclusion he could come to.