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“The original intent of the federal Contitution was to limit the power of the federal goverment to specifically enumerated powers.”

You are half correct. The other intent of our founding fathers in writing the bill of rights (that is part of the federal constitution) is to outline basic human rights that they stated did not come from the government, but come from your creator. The only role of the government in this case is to outline those rights and safeguard those rights for us. Rights such as free speech, unreasonable search and seizures, right against self incrimination, right to a speedy trial etc. Among those listed rights is also the right to keep and bear arms.

That means that the federal government has a duty to protect our civil rights as outlined in the bill of rights. Be it from an outside source or from a state government. For instance, you probably do not believe that a state government has a right to outlaw trial by jurys because that is one of our civil rights. Why is it different for keeping and bearing arms?

You are half correct. The other intent of our founding fathers in writing the bill of rights (that is part of the federal constitution) is to outline basic human rights that they stated did not come from the government, but come from your creator. The only role of the government in this case is to outline those rights and safeguard those rights for us. Rights such as free speech, unreasonable search and seizures, right against self incrimination, right to a speedy trial etc. Among those listed rights is also the right to keep and bear arms.

I'm afraid you'll have to dig a bit deeper than that. You are probably not aware that the Bill of Rights was a big controversy during ratification. You would probably think that there is no way freedom-loving colonials would ever object to having those rights enshrined like that, but they did. Here's why: a good number of men thought that outlining specific rights that the federal government could not violate would be mistakenly interpreted as meaning that those were the ONLY rights that the people had which were to be protected. However, others of the convention thought that those particular rights were so important to be protected from abuses by any central government, that they made the BOR anyway.

The most important concept to grasp is that the Founders were extremely fearful of a powerful centralized government. The Constitution was their effort to protect against this central government. The federal governments powers were to be "few and defined", so that they would not interfere with the sovereign States, nor exert any power over the people as individuals. Saying that the federal government has a bunch of rules that are supreme and that its own members would interpret that bunch of rules, is tantamount to saying that local governments have NO power, which is where we are finding ourselves today.

One more question for you: if the US Constitution, at the time of its ratification, was considered to overrule State law, then why would ANY state have bothered to create a state constitution, which usually mirrored the federal Constitution? There is only one reason, and that is that the States did not think the US federal government had authority over them, and therefore state constitutions were necessary to protect those very same rights for state citizens that were protected at the federal level.

"That means that the federal government has a duty to protect our civil rights as outlined in the bill of rights."

The Bill of Rights, as written, was to protect those rights from federal infringement only. States were free to infringe on those rights, and were guided only by their state constitution.

The concept is called "federalism". One of the things the 14th amendment destroyed.