See "Free State," Straight Outta Blackstone
Also, Madison originally drafted the amendment using the phrase, "a free country."
The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.
-- There was no application to the larger body since the states could and did violate all those rights mentioned under the BoR for decades after its writing. --
I hold the opposite view in both regards: that the second amendment aims to curtail the operation of the federal government; and that the states could not and did not disarm the general populace. I've read references that purport to show how states prevented people from being armed, but the cites are to laws that regulate the discharge of weapons, not the ownership or carrying of them. But I'm open to learning more, and look forward to citations to "states ... did violate [RKBA]." My impression is that, other than the slave/freeman distinction, states did not prohibit keeping and/or bearing of arms until the 20th century.
-- Besides the writers understood that militias were no match for professional armies so they were not depending upon them. --
The drafters did not want the US to obtain or maintain a standing army, but agreed that the constitution provides for the feds to raise and support Armies.
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State and country were used pretty interchangeably. Hence, Virginia was ofter referred to as “my country” by Virginians for example.
But the Second amendment was not intended to apply to states as Barron v. Baltimore explained. It was written entirely to mollify states-righters and remove their pretensions that the federal gov would disarm their militias. There was no federal militia. State militia could be federalized into federal service but their were formed, trained and equipped by the states see the Whiskey Rebellion as an instance.
Black codes disarmed freedmen in the post civil war period throughout the South.
Churches were often state funded until the middle of the 1800s.
There was no freedom of the press in the South until after the Civil War. Abolitionist papers and magazines were routinely seized and destroyed. Anyone brave enough to start such a newspaper had their presses destroyed and lives threatened.
Ditto wrt freedom of speech and free association as slaver mobs would attack them with state authorities applauding.