States couldn't pick and choose what to follow per se. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights for the most part only applied to the federal government. This is

States couldn't pick and choose what to follow per se. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights for the most part only applied to the federal government. This is well documented. Quoting the Constitution is pointless since it doesn't prove anything. If the federal government has the authority to do something then it is the law of the land. What you are missing is that the Constitution only allows like 10 things (I made up 10, but it is close to that). Anything other than those 10 things were left to the states (10th amendment). Barron v. Baltimore was a Supreme Court case (that was decided unanimously) that made it clear that the Bill of Rights did not apply to the States. After the 14th amendment (though not immediately) something called the Incorporation Doctrine became the mainstream opinion. This was the process of applying the amendments to the states which only could happened due to the 14th amendment. Prior to the 14th amendment states could ban guns though several of states had similar provisions to the 2nd amendment in their constitutions. Assuming they either amended their state constitution or never had the right in their constitution they could ban guns. That was the entire purpose of the the way the US was set up. The federal government has a basic setup mostly to ensure defense of the nation (and a few other things like weights and measures) and the States deal with everything else. If a state wanted to ban guns they could. If you wanted to own guns you could move to a state that allowed gun ownership. The US was intended to be closer to 50 distinct countries than one nation with 50 administrative regions like we have today.