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.
I agree with that. The RKBA does not depend on the 2nd amendment, and does not come from the second amendment. Its function was essentially a promise that the federal government would not create federal laws that infringed the right to keep and bear arms.
The people need to be armed, in order to maintain a boot on the neck of the government - that was (past tense intentional) the radical design of the United States government. The people in charge of the government, not the other way around. Those days are history.