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The original intent of the federal bill of rights was to limit the power of the federal government against individuals and the states.

I'll see if I can find some references.

{Later] It's difficult to come up with an explicit statement that the federal bill of rights applied only to the federal government. The reason for that is that nearly everyone who wrote about the topic at that time assumed that the state and federal governments were distinct, and that the federal government could not interfere in state business except to the extent that the U.S. Constitution explicitly gave it the power to do so.

This is a snippet from a speech by Patrick Henry, before ratification, calling for a bill of rights to be added to the U.S. Constitution:

You have a [state] Bill of Rights to defend you against the State Government, ... and yet you have none against Congress, ...

http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders ... 14s39.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The rest of the document is quite a slog. It is worth reading, however. It shows how most political philosophers of that generation assumed that all powers and rights were inherent in the people, except for the powers that the people explicitly granted to government.

Based on that principle, the framers of the U.S. Constitution initially thought that a federal bill of rights was unnecessary.

Imagine what life would be like today if that view had prevailed.

- Jim

The Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution initially was not held to apply to the states. The states had their own bills of rights. Some of them defined rights more definitively than the federal constitution, and some less. For example, Massachusetts and Connecticut had official state religions for quite a while after the ratification of the U.S. Constitution.

When the 14th amendment (equal protection) was ratified, the Supreme Court began to rule that the federal bill of rights applied to state governments. However, they accomplished incorporation one issue at a time.

There has never been a definitive ruling about whether the 2nd amendment is incorporated or not. Presser v. Illinois is the most nearly relevant, but the SCOTUS essentially dodged the question.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_(Bill_of_Rights" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presser_v._Illinois" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

- Jim